This time Phil Schiller brought a team of about 15 people over.

In addition to Apple's own patent team, there are also many legal personnel and local legal and translators in China.

Of course, there are many team members on Bomi. In addition to Cao Yang, Liu Zhiping and Liu Qiang, the general manager of Bomi Mobile, attending the meeting, there is also the entire patent team and Bomi's own legal team.

Bomi himself has a translator.

In fact, even if you don’t need a translator, Cao Yang’s English proficiency is enough for him to communicate with the other party. It is not easy to translate patent translation, especially computer-proper nouns. There are many related professional words and it is difficult to explain clearly, so the requirements for translation are very high.

Why do we need translation? Because this is basically a routine practice for large companies in formal negotiations, which is similar to the negotiations between the two countries on the diplomatic table. Chinese diplomats can understand each other's language. Many bigwigs can even correct the translation words. Using translation is a social etiquette in serious occasions, and it also shows respect for both sides.

After a polite greeting, Cao Yang invited the Apple team to the conference room.

The 3901 conference room in the middle of the 39th floor is a super large conference room that can accommodate about 50 people. Generally, such a large conference room cannot be used. Usually, the problem is solved in some conference rooms of 20 or 30 people. If it is too big, you can go directly to Boxue Hall.

So the arrival of the Apple team is almost the first time to use the conference room 3901.

For Cao Yang, he felt quite ritual.

After both sides sat down, Phil explained his purpose, "Dear Mr. Cao Yang, we had a phone call before, but because you seemed a little busy, you have been delayed until now to hold this patent licensing negotiation meeting."

Phil said it very tactfully, and it was already very well-educated to not throw the words "deliberately making things difficult" and "avoiding" directly on Boss Cao's face.

"We have already communicated the approximate patent licensing content on the phone. Today we brought Apple's own patent team and legal team to conduct detailed licensing negotiations on the specific patent content."

After he finished speaking, the assistant sent the report he had printed earlier to everyone present.

Cao Yang was a little surprised when he got it.

Because the report is too thick, it has about 300 pages in total, which is equivalent to a textbook for C# programming language.

There are two reports in total. In order to negotiate with Chinese companies, Apple also specially asked someone to translate a Chinese version in addition to the English version.

Cao Yang raised his hand, flipped through the previous directory, and couldn't help but smile knowingly.

It turns out that so many patents applied for by Bomi in the United States have passed, and many of them are patents that Apple cannot avoid, so they are very anxious to obtain Bomi's patent license as soon as possible.

Of course, there is another part of the report, which tells the story of the patents Apple applied for in the mobile phone field.

The reason why Apple's own patents are mainly because they want to use them in exchange and everyone authorizes each other, which can reduce the patent fees paid by Apple.

...

Bomi Company has applied for 786 patents in the United States, of which 158 were rejected, 274 were passed, and 354 were still under review.

So today Apple is here to discuss the 143 most important patents among these 274 patents.

Others can be bypassed, such as the appearance of the [rounded rectangle] design patent, which Apple can bypassed through the appearance design, Bomi's dual-stop dual-camera, this is also a patented content that can be bypassed by Apple...

However, it is difficult for Apple to get around this bunch of patented content in HOME keys, graphical interfaces, multi-touch...

Assuming that Bomi has fewer patents, only one or two, then Apple will use them after using them and will not pay so much attention. However, Bomi is too cruel and has made hundreds of patents directly. In today's absence of smartphones, Bomi is equivalent to monopolizing the future smartphone market directly with patents. Therefore, as long as Apple wants to achieve results in the smartphone field, Bomi will definitely not be able to bypass the mountain.

"Dear Bomi colleagues, let me briefly explain the general content in this report," Phil looked down at the report and said, "Your company has obtained more than 200 patents in the United States, and Apple is also making smartphones, and many of them are intersecting with your company. So our idea is whether we can authorize these patent contents in the report to us through mutual authorization.

I have to emphasize one thing,” Phil said. “Bomie is a very great company, and the world is impressed by the achievements you have made in the smartphone field.

Of course, Apple also has its own very advanced side. We have a number of patents that have passed the review and authorization in China. It is very beneficial for everyone to reach cooperation, and it is mutually beneficial for both parties.

The smartphones produced by Apple use the IOS operating system we developed ourselves. They are a relatively closed operating system, which is completely different from your company's Hongmeng system, so you don't have to worry that we will become your competitors on the front.

Apple has its own users, and core fans are our target group. We need your company's patent authorization to give these groups better services. Of course, I believe your company will also be interested in some of Apple's patents.

A strong alliance can enable both of us to develop better.”

Because of the different operating systems, there will be no head-on competition. I believe you, you are a fool.

But what Phil said also has some truth—

For example, users who like Apple's operating system will find it difficult to accept WINDOWS, and users who are used to Microsoft's operating system will find it difficult to accept Apple's OS system.

Although the notebook business areas of both parties have certain overlap, the overlap range is not very large.

These two groups of users have many quarreled on the Internet every year about ease of use and convenience.

The operational convenience of Hongmeng system is definitely better than Apple's. Cao Yang still has this confidence. After all, this thing was brought in 2021. It is obvious that it uses more than 15 years of design to reduce the dimensionality of them.

But it is hard to guarantee that those brainless Apple fans are just clamoring that Apple phones are more ease of use.

Cao Yang smiled and looked at the content of the report carefully, "Well... Then please explain to us what are the specific patent contents?"

Of course, more importantly, Cao Yang has to look at the patents provided by Apple and is not interested in it.

Phil first talks about the patent licenses Apple hopes to obtain Bomi, and then talks about what patents Apple has to exchange for.

Due to too much content in the patent, it is basically impossible to finish the talk within one or two days.

Think about it, this is almost a course that requires a college student to finish it in 4 years. It is actually a relatively difficult thing. In addition, the value of each patent must be evaluated according to the requirements of both parties and a long tug-of-war can be discussed clearly.

So this time they came and the meeting started for a long time.

One morning, the Apple team told a small part of the patent content.

After everyone finished their meal, they continued.

Cao Yang asked directly, "Mr. Phil, can you explain first what the patents you used to exchange?"

In fact, during the lunch break, Cao Yang roughly read it, but he still had some questions about the specific content of many things.

"Yeah... OK."

Apple has fewer patents, only more than 30 items, and it is faster to tell.

...

After an afternoon of explanation, Cao Yang probably got some understanding.

Originally, according to Apple's normal trajectory in previous life, they could obtain at least 1,000 patent content through the world's first smartphone, but since most of these were made by Bomi, Apple could only obtain a small number of patents exclusive to Apple.

Cao Yang is not interested in most of the patents here, such as the shell wear and emoji recording and sending patents:

An electronic device with a camera and a display device displays a virtual avatar that changes appearance in response to a change in a face in the field of view of the camera. The electronic device modifys one or more features of the virtual avatar in response to detecting a change in one or more physical features of the face in the field of view of the camera.

Mobile phone glass layer patent:

A glass layer with a prepared surface; a primer layer disposed on the prepared surface; an electroless metal layer disposed on the primer layer; and an electroless metal layer formed on the electroless metal layer.

Health management patent: The mobile phone can effectively detect the user's heart rate and walking steps... Because there is a built-in sensing device in the mobile phone that can be used to detect the position difference of vibration and movement...

Mobile phone case, a design patent for a mobile phone case.

...

Actually, Bomi doesn't really need these.

However, there are some patented features that Bomi mobile phones may use:

For example, suspension systems include top mounts, bottom mounts, rigid housings, air springs and linear actuators.

Apple's workmanship in this area is still very fine. The suspension system can effectively protect the electrical components in the phone case from shock impact or damage to internal parts caused by forceful knocking or direct hitting to the ground. This Bomi mobile phone needs to be strengthened.

Therefore, Cao Yang is still quite interested in Apple's suspension system and internal parts construction.

In addition, there are several patents that are also valuable.

...

Mainly focused on several aspects:

The first is Apple's internal efficient processing technology:

In this regard, Apple invented [computed efficient model selection schemes for multiple models and application environments], as well as [consistency switches for I/O traffic], [space-time codes with incremental redundancy]...

[Credit Management when the resource granularity is greater than the credit granularity]: The receiver on the credit-based flow control interface is configured to release one or more data credits early when a data payload resulting in less data credit unused in the buffer memory, where the buffer memory is allocated at a granularity coarse than the data credit.

Header credit and data credit are dynamically adjusted based on the actual packet data payload size.

In this regard, Apple is worthy of being an old developer, with very powerful processing technology, and many of them are accumulated from Apple computers, so in terms of overall usage efficiency, response speed and processing fluency, Apple is obviously better than Bomi.

If this part of Apple patent can be obtained, then Bomi's mobile phone can be at least one level in performance.

...

The second is that Apple's patents in music hardware have made Cao Yang more interested.

In this report, there are 5 or 6 items related to music processing alone:

1. Thin speaker configuration for compact electronic devices,

2. Equipment and methods for canceling active noise in personal listening devices.

...

Apple has been making the world's best portable music equipment since its ipod period. Jobs has extremely strict requirements on this area, so Apple's speakers and headphones-related construction techniques are quite advanced around the world.

Now Bomi's smartphones can only be said to be barely listened to, but for some professional musicians or users with high requirements for music quality, Bomi's phone sound quality is not very good.

...

The third is Apple's light sensing system: Apple mobile phones have studied special light sensing materials, which can allow your mobile phone screen to change twice with the change of light, and play a role in regulating light and protecting vision.

Bomi's mobile phone development time is limited, and there is no time to spend researching in such places. Therefore, Bomi's smartphone brightness adjustment is manually selected by users themselves, and it is still relatively weak in adaptive automatic adjustment. For research on photosensitive materials, Bomi can basically be said to be 0.

They mainly rely on LG's own screen technology.
To be continued...