This is a very sensationalized, editorialized opinion-piece article. I would like to see something more objective, and substantive.
> So fast-forward a few years to 1981. Mr. Harvey sat down with an electrical engineer whose name was Jim Cuddihy. And together, Mr. Harvey and Mr. Cuddihy put together ground-breaking inventions in communications technology that were ahead of their time.
It sounds like they made something novel and interesting!
> PMC’s business “is to license out the technology of Mr. Harvey and Mr. Cuddihy so that companies that want to use that technology with permission can do so,” Subramanian explained. “The company has over 20 licensees, and they've earned millions and millions of dollars from companies who have paid for the right to use PMC's technology."
> To the extent that Harvey and Cuddihy ever had an idea for an actual product, it seems to have been a kind of computerized graphical overlay on top of a TV screen. At some point in the early 1990s, PMC demonstrated a prototype to some potential investors in New York City. The prototype system consisted of a VCR and a computer that were hooked up to another TV screen, which combined the video streams in some way. It wasn’t connected to the internet.
But they were given the patent for it right? And they clearly had some kind of a working prototype.
> Whatever this contraption was, it was likely pathetically out of date when it was shown off.
Oh so their "contraption" was pathetically out of date..
> PMC never made any for sale. And as the CEO admitted, they didn’t even spend on R&D. Instead, they embraced the fantasy language of the patent troll—one in which real companies, like Sony and Arris and other licensees, “took licenses in our inventions because they were using those inventions,” in the words of PMC’s general counsel, Thomas Scott.
REAL COMPANIES, like Sony and Arris and other licensees.
This is the crux of the issue right here. Basically, they developed the technology but were never able to productize it themselves. So they sold the tech to a bunch of other companies. And then later they discovered that the tech was being used by many more companies, in many more products.
This doesn't sound like a typical patent-troll case to me. Apple can afford to pay 300 mil for some tech that they didn't invent. God knows they've stolen way more than that.
All the language you're citing is how the plaintiff's lawyer describes the business. The other "licensees" are companies against whom they won lawsuits or who settled with them.
If they win this one, in the next lawsuit, they'll be able to describe Apple as one of their licensees, paying them hundreds of millions of dollars.
PMC is "licensing" technology the way the mob is providing fire protection.
> So fast-forward a few years to 1981. Mr. Harvey sat down with an electrical engineer whose name was Jim Cuddihy. And together, Mr. Harvey and Mr. Cuddihy put together ground-breaking inventions in communications technology that were ahead of their time.
It sounds like they made something novel and interesting!
> PMC’s business “is to license out the technology of Mr. Harvey and Mr. Cuddihy so that companies that want to use that technology with permission can do so,” Subramanian explained. “The company has over 20 licensees, and they've earned millions and millions of dollars from companies who have paid for the right to use PMC's technology."
> To the extent that Harvey and Cuddihy ever had an idea for an actual product, it seems to have been a kind of computerized graphical overlay on top of a TV screen. At some point in the early 1990s, PMC demonstrated a prototype to some potential investors in New York City. The prototype system consisted of a VCR and a computer that were hooked up to another TV screen, which combined the video streams in some way. It wasn’t connected to the internet.
But they were given the patent for it right? And they clearly had some kind of a working prototype.
> Whatever this contraption was, it was likely pathetically out of date when it was shown off.
Oh so their "contraption" was pathetically out of date..
> PMC never made any for sale. And as the CEO admitted, they didn’t even spend on R&D. Instead, they embraced the fantasy language of the patent troll—one in which real companies, like Sony and Arris and other licensees, “took licenses in our inventions because they were using those inventions,” in the words of PMC’s general counsel, Thomas Scott.
REAL COMPANIES, like Sony and Arris and other licensees.
This is the crux of the issue right here. Basically, they developed the technology but were never able to productize it themselves. So they sold the tech to a bunch of other companies. And then later they discovered that the tech was being used by many more companies, in many more products.
This doesn't sound like a typical patent-troll case to me. Apple can afford to pay 300 mil for some tech that they didn't invent. God knows they've stolen way more than that.