 Mr. Mueller implies that he'd be happy to see Samsung's products banned, stating, "From a short-term perspective, it would certainly be great if every device maker could steal every original innovator's intellectual property. I'd rather live in a world in which some wireless devices get banned from time time than in a dictatorship with a weak rule of law." (Source: PDF Devices)
Mr. Mueller says Google giving early Android builds to Verizon may prove wrong-doing
One person certainly wasn't happy about Verizon Communications Inc.'s (VZ) amicus curiae brief ("friend of the court petition") on behalf of Samsung Electronics Comp., Ltd.'s (SEO 005930) in its case against Apple, Inc. (AAPL) -- Florian Mueller. The FOSS Patents writer fired off a long critical blog/editorial he implies that Verizon may be illegally conspiring with Google, Inc. (GOOG) to support Android at the expense of Apple.
He writes, "I'm sure that Apple will view this move as a self-serving attempt to game the system in Android's and Samsung's favor, as another sign of Verizon being staunchly Android-aligned in exchange for market-distorting favors from Google, and as an attack on the intellectual property-centric business model of Apple and other innovators."
He links to a document he believes supports this bold suggestion of Google and Verizon's conspiring to exchange "market-distorting favors". He writes that court filings contain "... a document that shows Verizon and Google promised each other unspecified favors, potentially anti-competitive ones since they did not document them in writing."
The document in question comes from Oracle Corp.'s (ORCL) court case against Google and states:
Lead device concept: Give early access to the software to partners who build and distribute devices to our specification (ie, Motorola and Verizon). They get a non-contractual time to market advantage and in return they align to our standard. In other words Google says that it rewards partners that honor its device specification with early releases of its source code. This appears no different than Apple's early releases of iOS/OS X to trusted developers, Microsoft Corp.'s (MSFT) early releases of Windows code to businesses, or countless other examples. But Mr. Mueller appears convinced that it's actually evidence of a possibly illegal conspiracy.
He goes on to accuse Verizon of intellectual property incompetence for its decision to support Google. He writes, "I seriously wonder whether Verizon's top-level management is completely incompetent with respect to intellectual property issues and perhaps being a bit irrational, or whether it's just doing all of this in exchange for whatever Google may have promised them."
It's unclear whether Mr. Mueller supports Apple's claims to own exclusive rights to produce minimalist tablet designs. He does qualify, "I've been highly critical of the German injunctions based on an excessively broad design-related right."
But he goes one to write, "I'd rather live in a world in which some wireless devices get banned from time time than in a dictatorship with a weak rule of law," and, "From a short-term perspective, it would certainly be great if every device maker could steal every original innovator's intellectual property."
Both comments seem to suggest he believes that Samsung stole Apple's iPad design, as Apple claims. His commentary clearly seems to imply Apple is an "innovator" in his eyes, and Samsung a thief.
Mr. Mueller has drawn a great deal of attention for his strong opinions on the case, even getting quoted in The Wall Street Journal.
"If you mod me down, I will become more insightful than you can possibly imagine." -- Slashdot
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