Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Fritzbox: AVM is threatened with a sales ban due to violations of Huawei patents

aroged.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 61 posts

Re: Fritzbox: AVM is threatened with a sales ban due to violations of Huawei patents

#51

Post by felurx »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #44
bogwog wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also the first title in the body is nonsense: > AVM threatens to ban the sale of Fritzbox routers So AVM is threatening to ban the sale of their own product? This looks like some SEO spam site with AI generated crap sprinkled on top.

>So AVM is threatening to ban the sale of their own product? I assume they have a huge captive domestic market that such threats are effective. Imagine VW threatening to ban the sale of the Golf

In this case, the Heise article is pretty clear that AVM is threatened with a sales ban, not that AVM itself is threatening one.

Re: Fritzbox: AVM is threatened with a sales ban due to violations of Huawei patents

#52

Post by Nab443 »

hulitu wrote: post #50
jeroenhd wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back in 2020 they also attempted to stop the sale of modified AVM second hand products running custom firmware based on the code they had to publish because of the GPL restrictions. They're still trying very hard to prevent people from modifying their hardware after purchase. The freedom to take a device and modify it to run your own changes is what the GPL is all about. Let's not forget the modern open source moveme…

They also do not support 3rd party DECTs. I had to use a cable to my Fritzbox to be able to use a DECT with addressbook. When connected as a DECT, The Fritzbox will not transmit the addressbook to the phone.

I'm using a Gigaset DECT phone with a FRITZ!Box 7530 AX, the address book works fine.

Re: Fritzbox: AVM is threatened with a sales ban due to violations of Huawei patents

#53

Post by jeroenhd »

arp242 wrote: post #32
jeroenhd wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back in 2020 they also attempted to stop the sale of modified AVM second hand products running custom firmware based on the code they had to publish because of the GPL restrictions. They're still trying very hard to prevent people from modifying their hardware after purchase. The freedom to take a device and modify it to run your own changes is what the GPL is all about. Let's not forget the modern open source moveme…

> Back in 2020 they also attempted to stop the sale of modified AVM second hand products running custom firmware I can't find anything on that. (and it's not that I disbelieve you, but details do matter, so very high-level descriptions isn't something I can really do anything with).

All I knew was what was reported in Dutch tech news. It looks like AVM won: https://www.heise.de/news/Rechtsstreit-um-gebrauchte-Fritzbo...

I just read up on the details, as best as I could with machine translation and my terrible German anyway.

Basically, a couple of thousand modems made for ISPs that got sold off after replacement ended up getting bought by Woog, which then flashed the latest official firmware for the hardware (which wasn't distinct from the carrier hardware in any way) into them. AVM didn't want them to sell carrier modems with unlocked firmware.

When I read about this stuff first, it was all labeled "custom firmware", but it looks like the firmware wasn't so custom after all.

Either way, AVM sued a company selling second hand hardware and now a tens thousands of perfectly functional modems seemingly ended up in a landfill somewhere.

Re: Fritzbox: AVM is threatened with a sales ban due to violations of Huawei patents

#54

Post by ibotty »

radicalbyte wrote: post #7
ibotty wrote: post #6

AVM is notorious for GPL violations. I cannot say anything about these patents (aside from stating the fact that all software patents are bogus, because math cannot be patented), but I would not be surprised if they intentionally violated them.

I wasn't aware of that, do you have sources? It's really odd seeing Chinese companies taking someone to court for IP infringement given that that is the modus operandi of Chinese companies and has been for decades.

https://github.com/Freetz-NG/freetz-ng/discussions/134 is the first I could find re getting the sources. Note, that the GPL requires the sources in "the preferred form" and that includes a way to build them (if AVM has a way to build the sources, which they certainly have).

Last time I got (or a customer had) a AVM box I requested the sources and got nothing that could even build (invalid C files, AFAIR).

Re: Fritzbox: AVM is threatened with a sales ban due to violations of Huawei patents

#55

Post by ibotty »

RobotToaster wrote: post #41
mrks_hy wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See my sibling comment - you can also click the left button ("Akzeptieren und weiter"), which just is your consent to see advertisement, it's a soft paywall (paying makes ads go away).

You have to consent to invasive tracking cookies or pay (isn't that against the GDPR?)

> isn't that against the GDPR?

It is.

Re: Fritzbox: AVM is threatened with a sales ban due to violations of Huawei patents

#56

Post by jeroenhd »

hulitu wrote: post #50
jeroenhd wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back in 2020 they also attempted to stop the sale of modified AVM second hand products running custom firmware based on the code they had to publish because of the GPL restrictions. They're still trying very hard to prevent people from modifying their hardware after purchase. The freedom to take a device and modify it to run your own changes is what the GPL is all about. Let's not forget the modern open source moveme…

They also do not support 3rd party DECTs. I had to use a cable to my Fritzbox to be able to use a DECT with addressbook. When connected as a DECT, The Fritzbox will not transmit the addressbook to the phone.

It's been a few years, but they definitely do support third party DECT phones. If I recall correctly, they even had to remove the "missed call" indicator on some brand of DECT phone (Siemens?) because they reverse engineered it and the manufacturer was (threatening? taking?) legal action.

Unfortunately, the DECT spec as implemented by many manufacturers isn't as broad as people seem to think it is. Most interoperability was done through DECT GAP last time I checked, and GAP lacks common features like "rich caller ID" and "address books".

I've seen other brands do address book support just fine, I think AVM tries to be compatible enough but just can't get the full feature set for every brand and model.

I've even seen Gigaset phones failing to support address books on more modern Gigaset basestations, DECT hardware is kind of a mess in that way.

Re: Fritzbox: AVM is threatened with a sales ban due to violations of Huawei patents

#57

Post by arp242 »

jeroenhd wrote: post #53
arp242 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Back in 2020 they also attempted to stop the sale of modified AVM second hand products running custom firmware I can't find anything on that. (and it's not that I disbelieve you, but details do matter, so very high-level descriptions isn't something I can really do anything with).

All I knew was what was reported in Dutch tech news. It looks like AVM won: https://www.heise.de/news/Rechtsstreit-um-gebrauchte-Fritzbo... I just read up on the details, as best as I could with machine translation and my terrible German anyway. Basically, a couple of thousand modems made for ISPs that got sold off after replacement ended up getting bought by Woog, which then flashed the latest official firmware for…

As I understand it, it's more of a trademark thing than GPL thing, but I'm also just relying on my German lessons where my favourite word was "schlaffen", and trademark law mostly just seems to be the "most convenient law" rather than an actual trademark dispute.

I kind of understand AVM's viewpoints on that one because they probably had a special deal with the ISP to sell these modems at a cheap price and now they're basically competing against themselves, but scrapping thousands of perfectly functional devices is of course just silly. My fritzbox had a "eco mode" or some such and I'm pretty sure that the scrapping completely obliterated the savings of eco mode of all fritzboxes combined.

I'm not hugely impressed by either case, but I also don't really think it backs up the "AVM is notorious for GPL violations" and "they intentionally violated the patents" (with an implied "they just ignore any IP law they don't like").

Re: Fritzbox: AVM is threatened with a sales ban due to violations of Huawei patents

#58

Post by hcfman »

orlp wrote: post #5

I looked at the patent EP3337077B1... It is utter rent-seeking nonsense. Patents are supposed to be for innovation, the patent literally just claims adding a field to a packet indicating if it's for a single user or multiple is a novel invention.

Patents are never about innovation. Not in a sense that applies to everyone.

I still think that all law suites should be paid for by the government. Both defence and offence. This would have a sort of balancing out effect and then make law actually be more applicable for everyone.

Maybe sounds radical. But think about it. In a democracy law should be equally useful to all citizens. It clearly is not.

Re: Fritzbox: AVM is threatened with a sales ban due to violations of Huawei patents

#59

Post by ibotty »

arp242 wrote: post #57
jeroenhd wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All I knew was what was reported in Dutch tech news. It looks like AVM won: https://www.heise.de/news/Rechtsstreit-um-gebrauchte-Fritzbo... I just read up on the details, as best as I could with machine translation and my terrible German anyway. Basically, a couple of thousand modems made for ISPs that got sold off after replacement ended up getting bought by Woog, which then flashed the latest official firmware for…

As I understand it, it's more of a trademark thing than GPL thing, but I'm also just relying on my German lessons where my favourite word was "schlaffen", and trademark law mostly just seems to be the "most convenient law" rather than an actual trademark dispute. I kind of understand AVM's viewpoints on that one because they probably had a special deal with the ISP to sell these modems at a cheap price and now they'r…

You might have missed my comment. It's not easy to get the sources which you as customer have the right to get. They are notorious, because they never comply voluntarily and for some models never comply. Just because people are not suing them all the time does not make it less of an issue.

See https://github.com/Freetz-NG/freetz-ng/discussions/134 (and possibly translate it).

Re: Fritzbox: AVM is threatened with a sales ban due to violations of Huawei patents

#60

Post by rocqua »

cornholio wrote: post #28
rocqua wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly it works the other way around, and this has a tendency to infect standardization proceedings. If you can put some technology that uses your patents in a standard like WiFi or 5G, that is a license to print money. There are plenty of good ideas that should be in a standard that are patented. Leaving aside the issue of whether it's good those patents exist, you do want that technology in the standards. So it's no…

The typical standards process is an adaptation to a world where patents exist. It tries to clearly determine what patents are required to build a technology, and will typically lump them up into a patent pool available for a nominal licensing fee. Participants are strongly incentivized to disclose any essential patents they hold and include them in the pool, so as a standards implementer you know that once you pay th…

That is a part of the process I hadn't considered. I was looking at the incentive of participants to have their patents in the standard. But it makes total sense that everyone who will implement the standard (which tends to involve the participants) wants no surprises around patents.
Post reply on HN