I don't see it that way at all, sorry. Both have the effect of eliminating valid competition from the market. Both are bad. Condemning one and not the other makes you, personally, part of the problem and not the solution, because you're fighting only on one side. Your utopia, apparently, has Apple squeezing everyone else from the market. You'll forgive me if I question the moral basis for your argument.

One way might be ethically bad, but the other puts the squeeze on everyone. What Google is involved in here is unquestionalby worse than what Apple is doing (attacking one company for a perceived copy job).

I think the issue is that you're an Apple hater/Android Fanboy and you're letting this clod your logic.

Getting kicked in the shin by a stranger is bad, as is getting shot point blank in the belly by a sawed off shotgun. Two things being bad doesn't mean one isn't worse.

No. Just no. Google (really Samsung, but whatever -- let's leave Google as the proxy here for simplicity) isn't squeezing "everyone." They're squeezing exactly one party, who happens to have already sued them. This is a defensive move in a larger battle, and viewing it as one-sided while cheering for an at-best-equally-at-fault party is just perpetuating the absurd status quo. Either you think patents suits are bad, or you are part of the problem.

Nonsense. If Samsung gets away with this it will have implicates for all agreements of this kind. Your hate for Apple is completely clogging your logic here.

What implications will it have, exactly? Let's just say what you seem to be implying: that FRAND agreements are worthless once you sue someone. Is that so bad? The patent covenants in the open source world almost always include this kind of term already.

So explain to me why the world will fall apart if everyone gets to ignore FRAND terms when used against parties that are already suing them over patent licenses? That sounds like a good thing to me.

Think about it some more. Suppose one smartphone company invests its money in R&D related to wireless communications that's fundamental to any smartphone, and as a result gets FRAND patents on those technologies. Now suppose their competitor instead invests its money in patenting things like swipe-to-unlock, creating a thicket of non-FRAND patents that allow them to attack any competing phone. The company that did the fundamental R&D that made smartphones possible loses to the company that patented a bunch of trivial things, because they have to license their patents to their competitors on the cheap, but their competitor doesn't have to license their thicket of non-FRAND patents and can sue to stop them actually selling any phones.

The way Apple is approaching FRAND patents disincentivises the kind of R&D required to make things like the iPhone possible in the first place. It didn't matter before because all the major phone manufacturers were doing some share of the R&D work, and this gave them a leg up on making their products work well - but that doesn't help if they can't actually sell those products because of Apple.

You really feel OK supposing that all Apple did for smartphones was swipe to unlock? Really? Like there was no difference in smartphones before iPhone and after? You are implying that all of Apples R&D was to patent swipe-to-unlock, and presto, iPhone is ready, because everything else was done by other companies? One may hate Apple if he wants but this kind of twisting is just stupid.

All of the claims Apple is getting injunctions and import bans based on are nonsense like slide-to-unlock.

You know the patent that is bedeviling HTC? It goes back to the Power Macintosh help system (and was anticipated by Netscape Navigator 2.0b1, among other things, most likely). You may be able to convince yourself that that was important R&D that went into the iPhone. I'd say Apple went rummaging through the files to find garbage to throw against the legal system, hoping some might stick. So far, it looks like their bet has paid off.

They only promised to make the patents FRAND. The fact that it turns out there was no actual solid legal definition of FRAND is why they are in court. That was a disaster in the making anyway and left intentionaly vague so these same large companies could bully smaller ones.

As I recall, Nokia started the war by demanding either an exorbitant price for their FRAND patents from Apple or the right to cross-license Apple's UI patents.

I don't see Apple in any way morally superior here. It is as if a country came to a summit and said "I see you have a nice arms control treaty. I want to join - except I won't be including this weapon, with which I'm going to immediately attack you".

Because FRAND was a way to avoid mutually assured destruction. With Apple finding away to start an attack separately, one can hardly say "hey, they were taking the high ground here".

That's not correct.

FRAND was a way to ensure that a standard had the ability to become popular without patents getting in the way. Cross licensing is about avoid mutually assured destruction.

The idea that Apple got an injunction for a patent dispute is hardly unique. It happens all the time.

It certainly doesn't happen "all the time". You have other examples of the import of mainstream tech gadgets being enjoined outside the current patent mess? Has it ever happened to a PC?