Is Apple ripe for another massive stock buyback?

Tim Cook spent a record $16 billion last quarter. Carl Icahn wants him to spend more.

Is Apple ripe for another massive stock buyback? - Apple 2.0 -Fortune Tech

New Apple: Up 20%, Epic Buybacks, More Cash

How much $AAPL has Apple, Inc. eaten with its $44 billion buyback appetite?

Going forward, it will be far more difficult for hedge funds, analysts and competitors to again seed the notion that Apple is doomed and that Samsung can be nothing but successful in taking its place, given how Apple has done nothing but grow stronger this year, while Samsung has erased its legendary reputation for unbridled growth, "forward thinking" innovation and all-around competence. It has lost in the market, in the courts, and in public perception.

It's also noteworthy that Icahn continued to push Apple's executive team to pursue buybacks into August, after the stock "recovered" to its highest point of 2013. If Icahn were merely after a short term gain, his continued tweeting and a push for dividends would make more sense than lobbying for Apple to buy shares at ostensibly its "new normal." Buybacks only make real sense if a stock is poised to go up.

Apple set records with its $16 billion worth of share buybacks in the June quarter. It could exceed those in the current September quarter. In fact, if it hasn't already it may have forever missed the opportunity to buy its own shares for so little, squandering the value of setting aside $60 billion expressly for the purpose of doing that very thing.

How much $AAPL has Apple, Inc. eaten with its $44 billion buyback appetite?

Here's a whole lot of backward, twisted European thinking that Apple should have been aware of.

Especially since Apple went through something similar with the iPod, and paid dearly for that.

I'm surprised their legal department let this slip on the iPhone.

There is obviously a disconnect between Apple executives and Apple legal.

Steve Jobs' original iPhone keynote video used to invalidate Apple patent in Germany

But Apple forgot about an important difference between U.S. patent law at the time and the patent laws of the rest of the world, especially Europe. In the United States in the pre-America Invents Act days, innovators had a twelve-month grace period to file for inventions after making an invention, and during those twelve months nothing that anyone would show publicly or publish would be eligible as prior art. In Europe, however, there never was such a grace period for patent applications, and even an inventor's own public demos could always be held against his own patents if they took place before the filing of an application. Even now, with the AIA in force, U.S. patent law has an exception in place for pre-filing disclosure by the inventor (35 U.S.C. 102(b)(1)(A)). Europe has always been stricter.