Nokia Sues Apple For Patent Infringement In iPhone

AVee writes "Engadget (amongst many others) reports that Nokia is suing Apple because the iPhone infringes on 10 Nokia patents related to GSM, UTMS and WiFi. While the press release doesn't contain much detail, it does state that Apple didn't agree to 'appropriate terms for Nokia's intellectual property,' which sounds like there have been negotiations about those patents."

Comments

I'll ask it again

[Locke2005]

Why are standards based on patented technology?

Re:I'll ask it again

[EvilNTUser]

Read the press release. Nokia has spent 40 billion euros in R&D over the last two decades. Wireless communication is probably not quite as simple as one click shopping.

Re:I'll ask it again

[Paolo DF]

I don't know... If you read the quote (copy&paste from BBC website):
"The basic principle in the mobile industry is that those companies who contribute in technology development to establish standards create intellectual property, which others then need to compensate for," said Ilkka Rahnasto, vice president of Legal & Intellectual Property at Nokia.
"Apple is also expected to follow this principle."

It seems that is more of a 'gentlemen agreement' thing.
I am not a native English speaker, though.

Re:I'll ask it again

[EvilNTUser]

Because otherwise it would be crap? We're not even talking about sound compression algorithms here, but stuff that needs serious R&D. You think >10Mbps downlink for your phone comes for free?

Think about it this way: would you rather have a patented standard everyone contributes to or have Nokia and Samsung privately decide on something they'll use together and shut everyone else out?

Re:I'll ask it again

[mea37]

Because standards that lag current technology by 17 years would go unused anyway? So instead of having to interoperate with one system and therefore needing to pay royalties to one group of patent-holders, any device manufacturer would have to either (1) play to a niche market, or (2) address the fragmented market by interoperating with many systems that each work differently, therefore needing to pay royalties to many groups of patent-holders?

Your question is reasonable when applied to standards that cover doing things for which there are alternatives unburdened by patents. In many areas (such as wireless telecommunications) that is not the case.

Re:I'll ask it again

[iluvcapra]

Think about it this way: would you rather have a patented standard everyone contributes to or have Nokia and Samsung privately decide on something they'll use together and shut everyone else out?

In many cases, as in the whole MP3 mess, the distinction between the two scenarios you provide is only a matter of degree... Nokia and Samsung "privately deciding to do something" and Nokia charging a smartphone OS vendor $12 a handset are indistinguishable, if, for example, you are the author of an open-source smartphone OS.

If Nokia and Samsung had some sort of secret protocol, that would almost be better, because then it would just be a matter of reverse-engineering.

Re:I'll ask it again

[EvilNTUser]

Who's stopping you from writing an open source OS for a phone you've bought? They're suing a device manufacturer. This isn't a simple case of ridiculous software patents, even though it may turn out some of them have a software component.

Re:I'll ask it again

[jsegal205]

Nokia is just angry that they are profits are down and Apple's profits are up.
Source: CNN Money

Re:I'll ask it again

[IndustrialComplex]

If it becomes a standard, I'd like to see the patent holder paid an award at the moment for the creation of the standard and then the patent is released into the public domain.

There are several problems with this idea.

What if the standard never takes off, did you just pay a lot for a useless patent?

Or, what if your patent is useful outside of the standard? You wouldn't want it to become public if you are licensing it for other uses.

Re:I'll ask it again

[grimJester]

"The basic principle in the mobile industry is that those companies who contribute in technology development to establish standards create intellectual property, which others then need to compensate for," said Ilkka Rahnasto, vice president of Legal & Intellectual Property at Nokia.

Yeah, and the basic principle in the IP industry is that those in the cartel establish standards that limit interoperability so that everyone else will have to pay up or be unable to make working devices. I'm Finnish and I don't like Nokias role in destroying the "information society". I accept that it's a broken system and it's the role of governments to fix it while corporations can only exploit it as best as they can. I still wish Nokia could stay outside this patent trolling bullshit. You're Finnish, not American. Cutthroat capitalism is not acceptable.

Re:I'll ask it again

[IndustrialComplex]

Nokia is just angry that they are profits are down and Apple's profits are up.
Source: CNN Money

Profits tend to be down when people aren't paying you for your work. ;)

Re:I'll ask it again

[jhol13]

stuff that needs serious R&D

Name one.

You think >10Mbps downlink for your phone comes for free?

It uses (among other things) Turbo codes which were developed by huge number of people (from different companies, universities, etc.) during several years. Why it is allowed to be patented the one implementation of the family? It could be found by computer search, or a trivial modification of paper from sixties or even fifties.

3G or LTE uses NOTHING fundamentally new - or show me.

Re:I'll ask it again

[Anne Thwacks]

I would be angry too if Apple's profits were up and mine were down ... oh, wait

Re:I'll ask it again

[Darinbob]

A big problem is that a "standard" means many things. I used to be naive and assume that standards were written by people in ivory towers who had not political or economic interests. There was also a bit of naivete in thinking the standards were written first and the technology arrived afterwords. Ie, like the academics create the ideas and base a standard off of it, then later on a commercial entity goes and turns it into a real product.

Except that I've learned later this is not at all the way things work. Standards are highly political, and highly economic. Academics rarely has any place in the product, except maybe by getting a few votes. There is sort of a hope out there that most voters will remain above the fray, but in practice this is a misplaced hope most of the time.

What generally happens, is that company A develops a new technology, and starts to sell it. Then company B develops a competing product, with vaguely similar technology. A standardization effort is started. Both company A and B refuse to compromise, and insist that their implementation be the standard. After all, these companies are already selling products to customers, and if they lose this standards fight, then they end up with a lot of customers who have noncompliant/obsolete devices. Meanwhile companies C and D join the standardization effort, because they want to make similar products but can't afford the years of prior research and development to come up with their own technology. Companies E and F join because they want to make auxillary products that can interact properly with the devices when they're standardized. Then all these people start taking sides.

Re:I'll ask it again

[Anonymous Coward]

Nokia has spent 40 billion euros in R&D over the last two decades.

Nokia spend so much on research, but what about the result of those research? Compare it with Microsoft Research. Beeng evil and all that Microsoft Reseach produce a lot of high-qaulity scientific papers every year, which cited and used all around the field. I remember quite a bunch of them. I can not remember even one paper form Nokia research. Computer Vision? Parallelism ? Machine learning ? What a they doing with all those money beside paying salaries to executives?

Re:I'll ask it again

[betterunixthanunix]

Why not? How about the fact that it locks out small companies who want to make products that adhere to the standard?

Just a hint: when standards are developed in house by a single company, it puts that company at an unfair advantage. Maybe the standards should not completely based on a single company's work?

Yes, I know, it is ridiculous to think that anyone without a multibillion dollar R&D budget could ever sell consumer electronics; after all, if they are not a big corporation, what the hell are they doing making cell phones?

Re:I'll ask it again

[nangus]

Why do people that cut throats keep getting lumped with these low life patent trolls?

Re:I'll ask it again

[rtfa-troll]

The chip vendor should be paying the licensing, not the company that uses the chips.

If the chip vendor is in a country where patents don't apply, selling to a place where they aren't enforced, why should they? It's Apple doing the importing.

This isn't about the patents. This is about Nokia seeing their lucrative smart phone market get a serious bite taken out of it and digging through their patent portfolio to try to find a way to stifle competition.

More likely it's about Apple refusing to license their multi-touch patents (have you noticed that no other phone has the pinch gesture; now you know why). Nokia is saying "we can play that too.."

Re:I'll ask it again

[rtfa-troll]

There is sort of a hope out there that most voters will remain above the fray, but in practice this is a misplaced hope most of the time.

most of the time the people sent to the standards are paid specifically to get what are called "fundamental patents" into the standard. That is where you have patented one particular way to do something (we do remember patents are about methods, not objectives) and you manage to get the standard to say that it will be done in the way your patent says it will be done.

this is basically a fun drinking game. You sit there for hours stoney faced saying "no" all day for the first day and explaining deep technical reasons why your competition's patent won't work in this sitation. Then in the evening you go out and get seriously drunk. Whilst drunk you start trading off what things each person really wants to get in to the standard. Then the next day, those who can still remember what was said get their way with the standard and only serious and proper persuasive arguments combined with good blackmail drinking photos are allowed to change the agreements of the previous night on pain of ostracism.

In telecomms standards this isn't even particularly immoral since the companies playing are all big boys who can take it. In the example before us we have Apple; about 9 on a scale of 1 to 10 for "intellectual property" evil and Nokia (about 7 or 9 but with a tendancy towards 10). Remember Apple is the company which inspired the League for Programming freedom. In fact Apple is arguably worse than Microsoft (has done more in practice; but doesn't go in for unsubtle bully boy threats) and is only clearly less Evil than Qualcomm (rates 15 on our earlier scale of 1 to 10).

Whilst I'm definitely anti software patent, and strongly believe in controlling the influence of other patents, this is a lawsuit happening to a company that really really had it coming to them.

Re:I'll ask it again

[Tanktalus]

Let's say that Nokia decided not to play ball, and just didn't bother researching. That, too, locks out small companies, because they can't afford the billion-dollar research budget to get there.

Or let's say that Nokia decided to hoard the information. After spending the $1B, they decided to keep it a secret and not license it to anyone. The only way to get the technology was to buy it pre-made from Nokia. That, too, locks out small companies who can't afford predatory pricing from the monopoly.

I'm not sure that small companies should get a free pass just because a big corp has spent a billion on R&D.

At least this way, Nokia is likely to license their patents (because that's the only way to survive - eventually the patent runs out and they can't exact any money for it) for much less than the R&D costs, allowing smaller companies to get into the market, while Nokia spreads the R&D cost over many licensees, and ends up with a return on their investment. With many licensees, it also provides for competition in the end marketplace that, though Nokia may get a cut on each phone, will pressure phone makers to keep their prices down, or to provide unique features of value to allow them to charge more. Either way, the consumer wins: cheap phones, or pricier phones that do other things.

Re:I'll ask it again

[betterunixthanunix]

Except that Nokia needs to do the research in order to have a business, and cell service providers would not want to create a network that only supported one vendor's phones. Of course, the service providers do not particularly care about letting small companies join the party, since there are enough large companies to satisfy the need for diversity.

Really, wireless communication methods do not need to be researched by a corporation; much of development of wireless communications methods was done in academia or by the military, and there is no reason why that shouldn't continue into the future. Why are these standards not be based on patent-free research performed at universities or the results of DARPA funded projects?

Re:I'll ask it again

[gabebear]

It's no more legal in the US for you to personally make or buy a device that uses a patent without a license than if you made a company that sells the same device. The one exception is for "philosophical inquiry, curiosity, or amusement", which has been construed VERY narrowly by the courts. This applies to university/school settings as well.

If Apple doesn't indemnify their users, Nokia could sue all iPhone users. A famous example of this situation is Microsoft SQL Server 7.0. Microsoft was infringing on a patent in 7.0, and ended the disputer by licensing the patent... but only for future versions. Anyone running 7.0, or selling products that use 7.0, are infringing on the patent. I don't believe anyone but Microsoft was sued over this though... http://www.gahtan.com/alan/articles/200306%20Patent%20Infringement.htm

Re:I'll ask it again

[sootman]

Excellent summary--you're just missing one part: after A and B start fighting and refusing to compromise, company (or group) Q comes along and says "These competing standards are getting us nowhere. Thus, we will make a NEW (possibly open) standard, then EVERYONE will be happy!" And then that goes nowhere and company/group Q is never heard from again.

Re:I'll ask it again

[davester666]

I suspect that cut throats are too cheap to hire good lobbyists and PR firms...

Re:I'll ask it again

[slashdotjunker]

Read the press release. Nokia has spent 40 billion euros in R&D over the last two decades. Wireless communication is probably not quite as simple as one click shopping.

Mods, this post is intellectually void. Just because someone spent 40 billion euros on something does not mean it's worth 40 billion. That's circular logic and you can use it to justify anything.

Re:I'll ask it again

[geoskd]

Read the press release. Nokia has spent 40 billion euros in R&D over the last two decades. Wireless communication is probably not quite as simple as one click shopping.

One has to ask, what part of that 40B was related to the wireless technology, and what part isn't? I'm going to bet that developing the wireless functionality was a vanishingly small part oft he whole, and that a far larger chunk of money went to developing the phones OS, than to developing the wireless chips, (which by the way, is mostly a function of compute power these days. The amount of bandwidth is directly related to how fast you can get the statistical analysis done. Otherwise, its mostly just little tricks to speed up the process a bit.) More of the R&D money related to the wireless communications has gone into integrating it directly into the phones existing chips to keep the package small than has gone into actual research on the wireless part.

-=Geoskd

Re:I'll ask it again

[dwater]

> I can not remember even one paper form Nokia research

http://research.nokia.com/

Help yourself...

Re:I'll ask it again

[XedLightParticle]

Because getting several kilometers radius of coverage from one antenna to hundreds of phones without causing intolerable interference cannot be done in theory alone, field testing and measurements are necessary and needs expensive equipment before any federal organization would dare to assign a radio frequency spectrum to your standard.

Also because antenna design has gone from internal to internal, and makes a big difference in range, another task that needs more than theory. This has nothing to do with the standard as such, it would just require iPhone to have a little external antenna, remember those good times?
It's simple, not everything can be done in software and theory, and real world costs real money... unfortunately

Re:I'll ask it again

[BESTouff]

Nokia is just angry that they are profits are down and Apple's profits are up.
Source: CNN Money [cnn.com]

An US info channel says an Euro company behaves badly against an Us company.

Re:I'll ask it again

[mdwh2]

Of course - if Nokia spends money on R&D, it must be throwing it down the toilet, because everyone knows that only Apple can innovate!

(I love how the only time we get a story on Slashdot about market leader Nokia is when the story also mentions the almighty Jphone.)

Re:I'll ask it again

[crwl]

More likely it's about Apple refusing to license their multi-touch patents (have you noticed that no other phone has the pinch gesture; now you know why). Nokia is saying "we can play that too.."

The HTC Hero has the pinch gesture. There probably are others, too.

Re:I'll ask it again

[mdwh2]

Nokia is just angry that they are profits are down and Apple's profits are up.

No, it says their share fell - but they still have a whopping 35%, even in just the smartphones market, whatever that is. Given that Nokia have a presence in all markets, where as Apple only occupy the high end, it suggests their lead overall will be even greater, something Apple can only dream of. The 7.4 million Iphone sales is a footnote in the mobile phone market - I imagine most of their revenue these days come from the Ipod.

It's debateable whether the Iphone even counts as a smartphone (go on, give me a definition that includes the Iphone, but doesn't include so-called "feature phones"?), in which case, Apple's share is rather small.

Let's not forget that Apple have sued other companies over patents too, so your claim that it's about being "angry" applies to them also.

Re:I'll ask it again

[dachshund]

Profits tend to be down when people aren't paying you for your work. ;)

I realize you put a ";)" on this statement, but it's worth clarifying anyway: Nokia's profits are down because people aren't buying their products (as much as they used to). I'm sure it would help Nokia to collect some one-time patent license fees, but it isn't going to heal their phone sales.

Re:I'll ask it again

[IndustrialComplex]

I agree with you completely, and I love the fact that I can make a ";)" comment and have it moderated at +insightful. (Though I was amused that I did get an Overrated modifier before I was even moderated)

Re:I'll ask it again

[rtfa-troll]

Interesting. Do you know if they paid up for a license? Here's a link about Apple patents that a bit of googling found.

Re:I'll ask it again

[rtfa-troll]

One of Nokia's problems with selling phones is that their interface hasn't been updated enough. Apple has many patents on the iphone interface and has threatened people who might want to use them. Most likely, if Nokia had access to Apple's patented technology, which is the most likely outcome of such a lawsuit, then they would be able to sell more phones.

Re:I'll ask it again

[Carewolf]

More likely, Nokia's profits are down because the economy is down and they are not on a significant rise. The already dominate everywhere except the US, so it is hard for them to grow except in the US, where they, like everybody else, just haven't found out exactly what it is Apple are paying all those journalists for free advertisement.

Re:I'll ask it again

[Nakarti]

Because patents have a very limited lifetime.

Why, would you prefer they be protected by copyright?

Your question lost its legitimacy when it wasn't about open standards(if the standard is supposed to be free, the tech behind it can't be monopolized.)

Re:I'll ask it again

[adam.ec]

stuff that needs serious R&D

Name one.

Name one what? R & D is a whole range of different processes put together. Name a process? Name a research idea? Name an exact product of R & D??????

You think >10Mbps downlink for your phone comes for free?

It uses (among other things) Turbo codes which were developed by huge number of people (from different companies, universities, etc.) during several years. Why it is allowed to be patented the one implementation of the family? It could be found by computer search, or a trivial modification of paper from sixties or even fifties.

I was under the impression that most software and hardware technologies were built on existing ones to an extent so does this mean that most future technologies can be given away for free because nobody patented silicon wafers or the C programming language? You said yourself, this is the one implementation of the family. Nokia has spent a lot of money implementing that family, why should they just go out on a limb to do so with no financial gain?

3G or LTE uses NOTHING fundamentally new - or show me.

Again, show you what? What you are talking about is such a large development area; are you wanting somebody to copy and paste the code that has been used or links to the 'huge number of people' that developed the underlying technology? If a company spends a lot of money 'implementing' a technology that is not yet on the market, and they have been willing to take the risk of it not being accepted, then, when it does work they deserve to pay themselves. At least Nokia are sharing. Should we start the troll wars again about Apple's use of BSD and charging for something they didn't create? Didn't think so. This is not a dig at Apple. But folks that think these companies should just hand everything out on a plate when they have forked up the cash to make it happen in the first place really get me mad.

Re:I'll ask it again

[JAlexoi]

FYI: NOTHING IS FUNDAMENTALLY NEW.
But look at it like at iPod and iPhone. All the technologies were available, but they are the first one to make it actually work well. Or better yet, look at cyclonic vacuum cleaner idea, steam power(at least since Heron of Alexandria) or photocopier(a.k.a Xerox) - nothing new, but no one thought about it.

Re:I'll ask it again

[jhol13]

Name one "stuff" that should be patentable.

I am very lenient, you can use whatever you want as "stuff".

Note: I am not saying Nokia is wrong, quite the contrary (everybody else is patenting and suing over silly things), why not Nokia?

Re:I'll ask it again

[adam.ec]

Name one "stuff" that should be patentable.

Very specific ideas should be patentable. The patent process is at fault not the idea of being able to patent something. People and companies genuinely spend their time researching and developing technologies - they should be allowed to protect their investment

I am very lenient, you can use whatever you want as "stuff".

Leniency is the problem when it comes to creating patents. People are allowed to patent a very vague idea and really the idea should be much more specific. Researchers worry when they have a very specific patent in case part of their development veers off from what their patent describes. This would be a good opportunity to build relations with another company who can help in this area or maybe they should be more sure of the technology they patented in the first place.

Note: I am not saying Nokia is wrong, quite the contrary (everybody else is patenting and suing over silly things), why not Nokia?

... but you are suggesting that Nokia is being silly by protecting their ideas and investment. Tell you what, create a business, make it a bit successful through hard work, put a lot of money into making it better.... then give it away to me for free.

Re:I'll ask it again

[jhol13]

Very specific ideas should be patentable.

Like a FEC found by a computer search? I disagree.

should be allowed to protect their investment

No, they should not get protection just because they invest.

I am not saying ANYTHING about Nokia. I am saying patent system should be killed.

Re:I'll ask it again

[mccabem]

The US cell market is a complete wasteland as far as competition in handsets. It all revolves around what the knuckleheads at Verizon (,etc, ad nauseum) think you want and how they think you want to see it.....for the low low price of a 2 year contract.

That is the essence of why Nokia doesn't sell (many) phones here - it's the vendors. Customers have no real say in the matter...not really...and the range of Nokia phones typically offered is terrible. (Unless you're of the rarified minority who a) is aware of and b) can consider paying $x00 for an unlocked "mostly functional" Nxx[x], of course. Heh.)

To wit:

AT&T's offering: Nokia Surge, 6350, Mural

Verizon: 7705, 7205, 6205, 2605, 2705

Sprint: none at all

That is an utterly unremarkable (not to say flip phones are bad) lineup of Nokia phones. No E-series or N-series even showing....c'mon.

-Matt

Not for long !

[Pieroxy]

Once the iPhones will have all flown away, Nokia will be left with noone to sue !!!

Re:Not for long !

[Asclepius99]

So long and thanks for all the apps.

Re:Two way street

[Anonymous Coward]

I sure hope its someone who makes specific, actionable claims instead of this kind of general accusation. I.e., not you.

Canned answer

[betterunixthanunix]

Canned answer: "How else will we encourage innovation?!"

Re:Canned answer

[Monkeedude1212]

Yahoo's Answer: Lap Dances

Re:Canned answer

[palegray.net]

A lap dance is so much better when investors are crying.

Re:Canned answer

[mcgrew]

bing's answer: Buy Windows 7

Re:Two way street

[emj]

Apple bad, Nokia good when we are talking about mobil phones. Nokias N900 has great Linux Comunity, and they are writing a Free cell phone communication stack ofono.

Re:So confused about who to root for...

[aesiamun]

Is nokia a patent troll?

Patent troll is a pejorative term used for a person or company that enforces its patents against one or more alleged infringers in a manner considered unduly aggressive or opportunistic, often with no intention to manufacture or market the patented invention.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_troll

Doesn't sound like it.

N900

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

I wonder how many of those same patents are included in the Linux based Maemo OS that the N900 has.

What exactly does that mean? If you have patents on some technology, but then release a device that implements them with code that's GPL V2 licensed? Does it mean that anyone can now use those patents royalty free as long as they use the gpl'd code? Or does it somehow invalidate them? Would GPL V3 change the situation appreciably?

Re:N900

[s.bots]

It sounds like these patents are more at the hardware level - GSM, UMTS (typo in summary), and WiFi are all hardware level patents. I don't think this really has anything to do with software or the GPL, but with Apple trying to use Nokia-patented hardware technologies royalty-free.

Re:N900

[Whalou]

UMTS (typo in summary)

Thanks for the correction!

I thought that uTMS was Nokia's answer to Apple's iTMS.

Re:N900

[terrymr]

I would imagine that Nokia is already collecting from the chipset manufacturers.

Re:N900

[oh2]

All the mobile phone companies that do actual work on the technology behind it all like Nokia and SonyEricsson have the hardware patents. The Iphone is a pretty piece of hardware, but the only parts of it that are developed by Apple are the software parts and the physical design. All the protocols and the radio stuff is developed on a whole other level by actual engineers, not the almighty Steve and his designer cohorts :p

Re:N900

[gad_zuki!]

>Does it mean that anyone can now use those patents royalty free as long as they use the gpl'd code?

The UMTS driver is going to be a binary blob, not open source.

Re:N900

[Anonymous Coward]

There's not actually a driver in the traditional sense, no binary blob either. The cellular stack is running on a completely different processor than the normal operating system which runs on the general purpose ARM core. The ARM userspace talks to the cellular chip using a serial protocol, basically sending AT commands like in the good old days of modems.

That's actually a very clever way to do it. It not only completely makes the questionable behavior of using binary kernels blobs unnecessary, but actually allows Nokia to give users complete open access (root) to the phone as there is no risk of someone modifying the cellular stack to be in violation of FCC or other regulatory bodies. It's a win-win for both openness and fulfilling the legal requirements.

Re:N900

[dissy]

What exactly does that mean? If you have patents on some technology, but then release a device that implements them with code that's GPL V2 licensed? Does it mean that anyone can now use those patents royalty free as long as they use the gpl'd code? Or does it somehow invalidate them? Would GPL V3 change the situation appreciably?

First off, I don't believe that is the case here. At first glance it appears these patents are hardware based, not software. But I could be quite wrong.

Second, assuming the situation you describe IS the case (Or to be applied to any where else that it is the case), the patents do not become GPLed or anything of the like.

BUT, the GPL (I know v3, but am unsure on v2) has a clause stating that you Can patent your code, but the second you actually sue anyone over it, your GPL license is instantly revoked.

This means if you download a piece of GPL software, make some changes to it, give those changes back like the license requires, and then patent your changes, all is well. Once you enforce your patent with a lawsuit, the GPL license for the software you downloaded and modified is revoked. You no longer can legally distribute it as a whole at all. You are only allowed to distribute the changes you wrote, not the end product.

Assuming Nokia has a software patent, and it is on their changes to some GPL based software, they just lost all rights to distribute it, and if they haven't already stopped shipping their product, are violating copyright law.

Re:N900

[aztracker1]

Not necessarily, if these chips are manufactured in a country that doesn't respect said patents, they may be sold/imported into the US by companies that are then responsible for royalty payments.

Re:N900

[Anonymous Coward]

>All the protocols and the radio stuff is developed on a whole other level by actual engineers, not the almighty Steve and his designer cohorts

Is this meant to imply that Apple doesn't have any hardware engineers? I doubt that's true in the least.

Re:N900

[jrumney]

GPLv2 says nothing about patents, and the patent clauses in GPLv3 only apply to "downstream recipients" of the GPL'ed source code. There is no way that a proprietary software developer can rely on the GPL to protect them from patent infringement claims.

Re:N900

[fbjon]

They don't make the hardware themselves and the manufacturers of the hardware are already paying Nokia for the technology. If this is actually true...

It may be that Nokia doesn't require royalties from chip manufacturers, but only end product manufacturers. After all, it's the end product manufacturers that are their competitors.

Re:N900

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

Cool. Though, I think you left out the most relevant part.

"Nokia Corporation announced today that it allows all its patents to be used in the further development of the Linux Kernel. Nokia believes that open source software communities, like open standards, foster innovation and make an important contribution to the creation and rapid adaptation of technologies."

So its conceivable that Nokia could sue for an infringement of its patents for closed source software, but not for linux based phones. Android would then, seem to be in the clear.

Re:So confused about who to root for...

[NoYob]

Hate Apple... But hate patent trolling... My brain hurts.

This "hate" you're talking about. Is it like "steam coming out of your ears" hate or is it "what a bunch jackasses" hate but whatever, I have a life?

There's That Progress in Science & the Useful

[Doc Ruby]

If Nokia couldn't sue Apple, they certainly wouldn't have developed the technology to make phones they could sell. They certainly need longer than a year to break even on their investment before Apple could use the tech to sell more phones to the public. There's no way Apple and Nokia would work together to develop a technology they could both use in their phones, if their competitors could use it after several months work adapting it to their own products. Patents must be granted for any length of time, no matter how much profit that "temporary" artificial government-enforced monopoly makes while locking the invention out from use by the maximum number of people.

Right? No, that doesn't seem right to me, either.

Re:So confused about who to root for...

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you know what "patent trolling" is? It's when people or companies register patents for technologies that they never intend to use or implement, for the sole purpose of suing others.

Nokia does, in fact, make phones and other communication devices.

Re:So confused about who to root for...

[hallucinogen]

1. Nokia invests over 40 billion EUR on R&D
2. Every manufacturer apart from one pays Nokia for their hard work
3. Instead of paying (like everybody else) Apple chooses to steal from Nokia
4. Nokia sues Apple

Is it really patent trolling?

Those 40 other... losers?

[Anonymusing]

Maybe Apple thinks the patents won't stand up in court. Just because 40 other companies licensed them from Nokia, doesn't mean those other companies actually considered taking on Nokia. Are those other companies as big and brash as Apple? Apple has an estimated market cap of ~$180 billion, while Nokia has ~$50 billion.

Re:Those 40 other... losers?

[hattig]

Maybe those 40 other companies licensed them as part of a broader licensing package, rather than specifically. Without someone doing an analysis of the patents involved, and how Apple have implemented the similar features (patents protect a specific way of doing something, not the something), we won't know.

It'll end up with Apple paying a nominal fee and cross-licensing their multitouch and other mobile patents, so Nokia won't have to worry about them in the future, and thus can remain a relevant company in the mobile marketplace.

Re:Those 40 other... losers?

[INeededALogin]

Are those other companies as big and brash as Apple? Apple has an estimated market cap of ~$180 billion, while Nokia has ~$50 billion.

What does Market Cap have to do with anything? Market cap is nothing more than the perceived value of the company by the public based on the value of its stock. Apple is on a hot streak right now. Also, those other companies are going to be Sony Ericcson, Motorola, HTC, Palm, Qualcomm, etc...

Nokia takes patents seriously. It resolved the Qualcomm problems with a $2.29 billion dollar payment that they paid to Qualcomm for use of their patents.

Re:Those 40 other... losers?

[sznupi]

The reason you imply is BS. The paperwork itself to prepare for this Nokia claim would take many months (plus there were apaprently negotiations)

Nokia is the ONLY profitable mobile phone manufacturer (others either quit the market, or mobile phones aren't their main product; RIM is debatable, though they don't seem to sell mobile phones per se, more enterprise solutions). They aren't far from "Nokia has more marketshare than all other manufacturers combined". Their smarpthones have half of the market. Such small loss doesn't seem significant for their long-term well being.

Re:Those 40 other... losers?

[INeededALogin]

Apple could buy Nokia in cash and a bit of stock.

These broad statements... No... Apple could not buy Nokia. They may offer their 30 billion in cash, but Nokia would simply turn it down. You don't simply buy a 100 year old company with so much history behind it. Not only that, but Nokia's losses are not in the device sector.

why would they want to

Oh, I don't know... tons of patents, Navteq, QT, loads of talented engineers, manufacturing facilities... value is not just last quarter. As it stands, Apple did have a quite a few bad quarters in their past as well.

Re:Those 40 other... losers?

[sznupi]

Or Apple simply believes they can get better terms than other manufacturers...

Re:Those 40 other... losers?

[Anonymusing]

That's pure zealot Apple fanboy logic right there. Apple's right and everyone else in the world is just wrong and naive.

Nope. Never said anything about Apple being right. Just putting forth a thought about their motives.

Admittedly, I'm typing this on a Mac right now, but there are three PCs (two Dells and a custom-built tower) humming along over here....

Re:Those 40 other... losers?

[Anonymusing]

Nokia takes patents seriously.

Are you suggesting Apple does NOT take patents seriously? They wouldn't flip off Nokia unless they felt secure doing so. Sometimes it seems like Apple's legal team is second in size only to its marketing team.

Re:Those 40 other... losers?

[nomadic]

What does Market Cap have to do with anything? Market cap is nothing more than the perceived value of the company by the public based on the value of its stock. Apple is on a hot streak right now. Also, those other companies are going to be Sony Ericcson, Motorola, HTC, Palm, Qualcomm, etc...

True, best comparator would be net revenue I think; Nokia makes a lot more than Apple. Honestly, neither company could buy the other (outside a heavily leveraged buyout).

Re:Those 40 other... losers?

[That's Unpossible!]

Profitable?

When you lose hundreds of millions of euros in a single quarter, we don't call that profitable.

Nokia is in a race to the bottom. Like the girl selling /free/ lemonade, they're going to "make it up on volume."

Let them have the marketshare, Apple is taking the mindshare, and making billions doing it.

Re:Those 40 other... losers?

[sznupi]

Only Nokia Siemens lost money. The rest is profitable. (also, I'd like to point out that looking at a single quarter...well, fixation on short term really helped with recent recession; really...)

Also, stop with this "iPhone is taking over" BS. Yes, Apple pushed the market forward, and they should be applauded for it. But outside US, Japan and few other countries, iPhone practically doesn't exist. It will be similar story as with Macs and PCs. Soon the biggest, by far, market for smartphone growth will be in dozens of countries you don't even hear about. Places where Apple doesn't even have the will to be present. Places where Macs and iPods never existed. Where Nokia completelly dominates. Where Symbian (and Android, I'd guess) will carve a huge userbase.

Re:Those 40 other... losers?

[LucidBeast]

I wouldn't buy Apple at $200 because I think it is really worth that. Over the years I've learned that the market has really nothing to do with reality, but everything to do with what people think that other people might think the value is.

Re:Those 40 other... losers?

[Anonymusing]

You'd be surprised how many people don't want, don't need, or can't afford an iPhone. It's a nice device, but it doesn't cater to the entire market - not even close.

Apple knows this. Their original stated goal was 10% market penetration. According to some reports, they achieved that in first two quarters of this year (worldwide, not just U.S.). (They apparently hit their 2008 target two months early.)

They are still a success, businesswise, as long as they are hitting their targets. Apple is probably looking to do in cell phones what they do in computers: maintain a profitable edge in the mid-to-high-end markets -- even if staying a lot smaller than the other players -- and leave the low-end, lower-margin market to competitors.

Re:Those 40 other... losers?

[Karlt1]

True, best comparator would be net revenue I think; Nokia makes a lot more than Apple. Honestly, neither company could buy the other (outside a heavily leveraged buyout).

Net Revenue is called profit.

http://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE:NOK&fstype=ii

Nokia's net income last reported quarter - 559 Million EUR loss ($838 Million US)
Apple's net income last quarter - $1,229 Million (GAAP) $2,855 Million (Non GAAP)

Nokia's market cap - $49.38 Billion
Apple's cash on hand - $35.171 Billion

Re:Those 40 other... losers?

[saleenS281]

Given that two of the companies are LG Electronics and Sony... I'd say it's fairly safe to assume they could fight back in court if they really wanted to.

Re:Those 40 other... losers?

[sznupi]

Their original stated goal was 10% market penetration. According to some reports, they achieved that in first two quarters of this year (worldwide, not just U.S.).

See, the thing is...they didn't. They achieved 10% but only of the smartphone market (with the "smartphone" being in itself quite fluid term...under some definitions iPhone OS doesn't qualify; heck, SE featurephones might be close enough to fall into it under slightly different criteria, they sure do have multitasking). But smartphones are still a small part of the total mobile phone market; vast majority of devices sold are cheap feature phones.

And here's the deal: Nokia pushes Symbian to replace S40. Android device makers stated their plans to bring sub $100 devices already in the next year (and how soon sub $50? Prices without contract of course) This will be when they will grow immenselly, they won't even have to really steal marketshare from each other. Apple doesn't even plan to compete, as you wrote. How long will they be able to find new market segments that keep them succesfull?

Re:Those 40 other... losers?

[mgblst]

Then you are using one sort of method to buy and sell.

You should not be buying because you think it is worth it, that is idiotic.

You should be buying because of what you think other people will value it at in the future. Who cares if nobody buys anything from Apple ever again, but if the stock price will be $400 in the next few months, it is a good idea to buy.

In short, you are not logical.

Re:Those 40 other... losers?

[Too Much Noise]

Are you that simple?

ok, let's look at the naive picture. AAPL has about 24.5B in cash and short-term investments as of end of last quarter. That's telling you nothing yet, since the company also has other current and non-current assets, and you have to subtract liabilities. Let's say current assets minus current liabilities (net tangible assets include non-liquid ones and various accounting issues in this market), that's about 18.5B. No sane company would use that completely for acquisitions, today's lending markets being what they are. But still. Now, Nokia has a market cap of some 49B and you bet any hostile takeover[*] would require quite a premium to convince shareholders, plus investment banking fees. Putting that at a 40% extra is very conservative, but let's assume that. You end up with some 70B acquisition costs. So AAPL would have to raise roughly Nokia's market cap beyond their net current assets, which is slightly less than a third of their market cap. Apple's stock would tank if they tried to raise that kind of money, either in the stock market or via bonds, making it even harder to do.

So no, Apple can't buy Nokia.

[1] management is free to refuse a takeover offer. Then, if enough shareholders disagree, they can hold a shareholder meeting, boot management and go ahead with the sale. Then, you have regulators to convince to approve the sale, particularly for such large companies. So it's not that simple even with a public company. Just ask Larry, Oracle has been playing this game a lot lately.

Re:Those 40 other... losers?

[nomadic]

One quarter doesn't tell you anything; Nokia was hit hard by the depression, and while it's profits are in the red, historically it has made more money, ships more units, and operates on a larger scale than Apple.

Re:Those 40 other... losers?

[Carewolf]

You are using bubble logic. Please review the economic development the last 24 month, and rethink your advise.

Bubble logic is sound economic advise as long as things are going up, once they go down you need to know what things are _really_ worth.

Re:Those 40 other... losers?

[sznupi]

Yes, because every human on this planet that wants a mobile phone already has one. Also, none of those that already have one (or will have in the feature) will buy a new one down the road, with more features/etc. (but still at prices way below at which Apple is aiming)

Re:Those 40 other... losers?

[Karlt1]

One quarter doesn't tell you anything; Nokia was hit hard by the depression, and while it's profits are in the red, historically it has made more money, ships more units, and operates on a larger scale than Apple.

So was Apple operating in a parallel universe where there was no recession when it reported record revenues and profits on Tuesday?

Nokia may sell a lot more phones but the average price of a Nokia phone is $68. The average price of an iPhone is $669 (wholesale price).

http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/20090804/iphone-claims-32-percent-of-handset-industry-operating-profits/

Apple's share of smart phone profits is 32%

Nokia's has made less than Apple every quarter for the last four quarters and as of close of business today is worth about a quarter of what Apple is worth (total market cap).

This is no different from Dell selling a lot more computers than Apple but being a lot less profitable doing it.

Re:Those 40 other... losers?

[walshy007]

They have better hardware designers.

Citation needed. the iphone may be a great pda, but it's shite as an actual phone. No tactile feedback, screen prone to getting smashed, etc

Re:Those 40 other... losers?

[JAlexoi]

Wait a second. With the recently moved out networks division Nokia's revenue was 50bn Euros for 2008 and Apple Inc's was 39bn US Dollars. I believe your comparisons based on current share price are dead wrong.

Re:Those 40 other... losers?

[JAlexoi]

Market cap is a lousy measure btw. By that measure, the giant that IBM is, is smaller than Apple. Apple is apparently bigger than Wal Mart, AT&T, Siemens and a whole lot of others. And marginally smaller than Microsoft.

Re:So confused about who to root for...

[Viski]

And it seems they have tried to negotiate with Apple about licensing the patents. That's not something a patent troll does. They just try to go for maximum profit by coercing the others to settle the lawsuit or by winning in the court.

Oh boy! A lawsuit story!

[Quiet_Desperation]

Would you just do a spinoff site calls "SueDot" already?

Re:Two way street

[rm999]

This is largely the point; phone companies gather 100s of patents that cover every aspect of their phones. These patents are often so broad that courts will not uphold them or will force them to be narrowed.

Still, the lawyers use these patents as a sort of negotiation tool. In this and many other industries, patent lawyers aren't lawyers as much as strategists; for all we know, Nokia is doing this as a defensive method because they know they are infringing on some Apple IP. Or, perhaps, they want some cool multitouch features in their next phone.

See this article for a fascinating analysis of Apple and Palm's patent war:
http://www.engadget.com/2009/01/28/apple-vs-palm-the-in-depth-analysis/

Just like Cisco...

[bkr1_2k]

This will be another Cisco event where the case eventually gets settled out of court for some undisclosed amount of money... nothing to see here.

Re:Two way street

[demachina]

Symbian is such a primitive operating system I doubt its possible for it to infringe any patent that didn't expire 10 years ago.

Qt on the other hand, that one is almost certain to be violating some patents, I wonder if it infringes on any Apple font patents.

You can guess where this is probably heading it will grind through courts and backroom negotiations for years, they will either settle out of court and cross license patents, or maybe Apple will have to throw Nokia some cash. They have more than $30 billion in cash reserves if memory serves, almost as much as Microsoft so I doubt it will put much of a dent in their bank account.

Presumed guilty

[realinvalidname]

...because the iPhone infringes on 10 Nokia patents related to GSM, UTMS and WiFi

Nice presumption that Nokia's claim is valid. If this were any company other than nefarious, evil, proprietary-everything Apple, would the /. summary be so favorable to Nokia?

Re:Presumed guilty

[csboyer]

Older? Hasn't Nokia been around since the late 1800s? Though I think they were making paper then......

Re:Presumed guilty

[demachina]

Since nearly every other cell phone maker has licensed these patents and Apple was negotiating to license them chances are pretty good Nokia's claim is valid. Don't think it has much to do with Slashdot bias.

Presumably Nokia's licensing terms were unreasonable to Apple, this is just escalation of the "negotiating" process by one side or the other, Nokia thinks they will win and get more cash than Apple was offering in the negotiation, or maybe even Apple thought they will do better in court or with a counter suit over other patents so they provoked Nokia in to this.

Re:Presumed guilty

[nelsonal]

The Nokia founder invented pneumatic tires. I think they might be just a hair older than Jobs and Woz.

Re:Presumed guilty

[That's Unpossible!]

I think it's ok to state the reason Nokia is giving for suing. They aren't saying they're right.

Re:Presumed guilty

[AliasMarlowe]

Older? Hasn't Nokia been around since the late 1800s? Though I think they were making paper then......

I used to drive past that paper mill every day...
Actually, they originally made rubber things (tires and boots, that is). Those divisions were sold off in the 1980s, but still exist using the "Nokian" brand name. Both of our cars have Nokian studded winter tires, and we have Nokian rubber boots (Wellington boots, for the brits).

Re:Presumed guilty

[realinvalidname]

No, they really are saying exactly that. Look at the sentence: "Endaget is reporting..." (statement of fact) "...that Nokia is suing Apple..." (statement of fact) "...because the iPhone infringes on 10 patents" (statement of fact).

I used to copy-edit at CNN, and this is a textbook case of convicting someone through sloppy writing. The summary should say "...because Nokia says the iPhone..." or "...because the iPhone allegedly..."

Of course, the other funny thing is that most every other patent story on Slashdot howls at the ridiculousness of patent cases, if not the implausibility of patents themselves.

Re:Presumed guilty

[INeededALogin]

And for the record.....Apple is older then Nokia.

And for the record..... a google search would of saved you some embarrassment.

Re:Presumed guilty

[demachina]

I should add I seriously would have thought Apple would have and licensed these patents when iPhone was just a glitter in Jobs eye, unless even back then Nokia saw the threat (thinking the iPod which was already big then) and wanted a lot even before it shipped. Pretty sure anyone doing a cell phone would know they have to license GSM from Nokia and or CDMA from Qualcomm before they even start.

Now iPhone is a huge success, making billions of dollars, Apple has $30+ billion in the bank, and is giving Nokia serious competition and grief so you can be pretty sure their terms are probably 10X worse now than they would have been a few years ago.

Re:Presumed guilty

[Anonymous Coward]

Nokia has been making mobile phones since they were the size of a large brick. And created or co-created much of the basic hardware technology used in mobile phones today...

I think i'll believe them when they say they invented and patented a bunch of hardware that apple swiped without proper payment.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia

In todays world they are a pretty straight dealing stand up company. (compared to most others)

If they say apple ripped them off. Apple most likely did.

Hey.. see what not screwing people over and not ripping everyone off gets you? People believe you when it's important.

Re:Presumed guilty

[jhol13]

Am I the only one who reads your text as "the lawyers at Nokia and Apple think they can make more money by going to court"?

Re:Presumed guilty

[wfolta]

Or perhaps Nokia, which has totally dropped the ball in the North American market, and which is also now facing an unusually tough challenge in the smartphone market, is refusing to license to Apple under reasonable terms in order to try to slow down the iTrain?

Re:Presumed guilty

[AVee]

No, they really are saying exactly that. Look at the sentence: "Endaget is reporting..." (statement of fact) "...that Nokia is suing Apple..." (statement of fact) "...because the iPhone infringes on 10 patents" (statement of fact).

I used to copy-edit at CNN, and this is a textbook case of convicting someone through sloppy writing. The summary should say "...because Nokia says the iPhone..." or "...because the iPhone allegedly..."

Of course, the other funny thing is that most every other patent story on Slashdot howls at the ridiculousness of patent cases, if not the implausibility of patents themselves.

Sorry, I forgot to cover my ass at least five times before saying anything about a court case.
Still, as far as I can see "the iPhone infringes on 10 patents" is the reason Nokia is suing Apple. Even if that claim turns out to be totally absurd it is still the reason Nokia sued Apple. But I'm not a native English speaker so I might just read that differently.

That UTMS thingy however, that was just sloppy writing...

Re:Presumed guilty

[rtfa-troll]

Why would someone not developing GSM silicon have to pay to license patents on GSM silicon?

Err. Because they bought from a company which didn't pay a for a license? Next please.

Re:Presumed guilty

[Virak]

Nice presumption that Nokia's claim is valid. If this were any company other than nefarious, evil, proprietary-everything Apple, would the /. summary be so favorable to Nokia?

This is hardly just "saying it's for the courts" and merely claiming it to be a bad summary. This is "dramatically exaggerating every single aspect of the situation". The summary isn't "presuming" anything. At most it's poorly worded. Most of Slashdot doesn't think Aplle is "nefarious, evil, proprietary-everything". The summary is also fairly neutral and hardly "so favorable to Nokia".

Re:Presumed guilty

[jrumney]

But if you build a car that uses a diesel engine purchased from Ssangyong, and they haven't paid Ford for the patents, then who pays for the patents when you bring that engine into the US where the patents are valid, or do you get to use Ford's patents for free?

Re:Presumed guilty

[mvdwege]

Serious competition? You Apple fanbois get more ridiculous with every JesusPhone story on Slashdot. Even the most optimistic numbers for Apple have Nokia selling almost 5 smartphones for every iPhone sold (source: Gartner).

Mart

Re:Presumed guilty

[dangitman]

Even the most optimistic numbers for Apple have Nokia selling almost 5 smartphones for every iPhone sold (source: Gartner).

If your source is Gartner, then it's almost guaranteed to be wrong.

Re:Presumed guilty

[mvdwege]

I use Gartner because it was the Cult of Jobs that was crowing about those numbers recently. Hence my qualifier "the most optimistic for Apple".

Surely you are smart enough to see the implication that I don't necessarily believe those numbers?

Mart

Re:Presumed guilty

[mcgrew]

Really? I thought pneumatic tyres (their spelling, since they invented the things) were invented in Scotland. Apparently so does Wikipedia:

The first practical pneumatic tire was made by John Boyd Dunlop, a Scot, in 1887 for his son's bicycle, in an effort to prevent the headaches his son had while riding on rough roads (Dunlop's patent was later declared invalid because of prior art by fellow Scot Robert William Thomson). Dunlop is credited with "realizing rubber could withstand the wear and tear of being a tire while retaining its resilience".[2]

Re:Two way street

[AlXtreme]

Popularity != Quality

Re:There's That Progress in Science & the Usef

[Anonymous Coward]

In the United States, under current patent law, the term of patent, provided that maintenance fees are paid on time, are: For applications filed on or after June 8, 1995,[1] the patent term is 20 years from the filing date of the earliest U.S. application to which priority is claimed (excluding provisional applications).[2] For applications that were pending on and for patents that were still in force on June 8, 1995, the patent term is either 17 years from the issue date or 20 years from the filing date of the earliest U.S. application to which priority is claimed (excluding provisional applications), the longer term applying.[3] The patent term in the United States was changed in 1995 to bring U.S. patent law into conformity with the World Trade Organization's Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) as negotiated in the Uruguay Round. As a side effect, it is no longer possible to maintain submarine patents in the U.S., since the patent term now depends on the priority date, not the issue date. Design patents, unlike utility patents, have a term of 14 years from the date of issue.[4]

Re:Two way street

[MadFarmAnimalz]

Well, we already have FSO. I'm no subject matter expert, but a lot of the arguments for why Ofono and not FSO is NIH.

Re:Two way street

[EvilNTUser]

Are you kidding or do you really not know that it's not shipping yet?

It's funny how Nokia is seen as the evil 500 pound gorilla rather than a 500 pound penguin that puts demoscene videos in its ads.

Re:Two way street

[Paul Jakma]

Well, the N900 has only just announced and isn't actually shipping yet...

Re:Two way street

[INeededALogin]

Last I checked the N900 was fairly worthless for connecting to Exchange, which, sad though it may well be, is kind of a critical must-have for a "smart" phone.

Incorrect sir. N810 lacked an exchange client. The N900 has full support for Exchange just like every other Nokia Smartphone: link

Re:Two way street

[H.G.Blob]

Two things:
1)Nokia N900 hasn't been released yet
2)All Nokia smarphones have had the ability to sync with exchange for a long time.

Re:Two way street

[idontgno]

Apple advocates may not want to play the popularity card. By that standard, MacOS must suck, cuz Windows derivatives are 18 times more popular.

C'mon, I don't even like Apple, and I know better than to try to equate market share with superiority. In both cases, there must be some other explanation.

Oh, yeah, marketing.

Re:Two way street

[slinches]

That may be because the N900 is not available yet (they are only accepting pre-orders) http://maemo.nokia.com/n900/

Re:Two way street

[TheRaven64]

Because the N900 isn't out yet? If it's already generating one tenth of the iPhone sales as pre-orders then I'd imagine Nokia is incredibly happy. On the other hand, if we're comparing released phones to released phones, then I'd imagine that Nokia is quite happy with their 78% of the smartphone market and similar share of the not-so-smart phone market.

Re:Two way street

[ianare]

Because it isn't shipping yet.

Re:So confused about who to root for...

[Kirin Fenrir]

I was making a (poor) joke. Seemed much funnier at the time.

Comedy is a fickle mistress.

Re:Two way street

[rcamans]

Actually, every big corp which holds patents MUST sue to protect their patents, or they will lose the right to them. If they do not do due diligence in protecting their patents, then eventually someone can use the patents and say in court that the patent owners were not protecting their patents property rights, so the patents were in the public domain. Patents only mean that you can sue to protect them. If you don't sue, you lose them.
IIMNAL

Re:Two way street

[TheRaven64]

Symbian is such a primitive operating system I doubt its possible for it to infringe any patent that didn't expire 10 years ago.

It's a realtime microkernel with an event-driven userspace API, a full POSIX implementation. Calling it primitive is quite astonishing.

Re:Two way street

[The Grim Reefer2]

Bullshit. If the Nokia N900 is so good, why are people buying 10x as many iPhones?

Effective marketing.

Re:Two way street

[kbrannen]

Bullshit. If the Nokia N900 is so good, why are people buying 10x as many iPhones?

Because the N900 isn't being released until November, so people can't buy it yet. I have one, but then again, I work for Nokia. :)

Re:There's That Progress in Science & the Usef

[TheRaven64]

If Nokia's phones had to compete with phones made by people who didn't spend large amounts on R&D and just copied the technology, would they still be profitable enough to keep spending money on R&D? The point of the patent system is to reward companies that spend the money to develop technologies and, by extension, penalise those that don't. Apple produced a product using Nokia's research, competing with Nokia. Sounds like a fairly clear-cut case of the patent system doing the right thing, to me. Of course, Apple is free to devote some R&D resources to future mobile standards, and then they can avoid the license fees by putting up some equally valuable research for cross-licensing.

Re:Two way street

[sbeckstead]

Yeah I don't think cockroaches have anything on humans and there are way more cockroaches than humans.

Nothing to do with software !!

[pablo_max]

Looking over these posts..it's amazing that how little people understand of the technology they use.
Nokia's patents pertaining to GSM technology and UMTS have absolutely nothing to do with a phones OS but rather the 7 layers under it.

Nokia has spent many millions over the years on GSM and UMTS. They are major contributors to the 3GPP standards body and have help in a measurable way to shape the technology.
How can people call Nolia a patent troll because some company comes in years after Nokia did all the work and steals the tech?? Are you kidding me?

I know it's Apple and the normal rules of the world should not apply, but for F's sake people. This is the reason we have patents! It's not some nonsense software patent.

Re:Nothing to do with software !!

[bill_mcgonigle]

Nokia's patents pertaining to GSM technology and UMTS have absolutely nothing to do with a phones OS but rather the 7 layers under it.

Yes, this is the prima facie matter, but usually there's more to it than that. Most likely Nokia has found that upcoming Qt features (or something related) infringe on Apple's IP. This is a corporation's way of saying, "we'd like to do a cross-licensing deal with you," especially if the other side isn't playing ball. In the end, Apple gets to makes its phones, Nokia ships the UI it wants to, nobody has to pay (except to the lawyers, of course).

Re:Nothing to do with software !!

[Drathos]

Granted, I don't know all the details, but the info I've seen about this makes it sound like these are all related to GSM, UTMS, and WiFi hardware. Since Apple does not produce this hardware themselves, why should they be responsible for licensing this from Nokia? The actual manufacturer of the related hardware (Broadcom and Infineon, IIRC) should be responsible.

Re:Nothing to do with software !!

[garote]

Mod parent right the heck up. This is exactly what is rotten here.

This is like Les Paul suing Jack White because he didn't put in his "fair share" of research time on the electric guitar.

Re:Nothing to do with software !!

[jrumney]

Due to the fact that any patents are only valid in some markets, it is always up to the manufacturer of the end product to license the patents they need for each market the device is sold in. Component suppliers never include patent royalties in the cost of the component unless it is patents that they themselves own.

Re:Nothing to do with software !!

[Max Littlemore]

Yeah... if Jack White released an album that came bundled with a Chinese copy of a Les Paul guitar and "Les Paul" plastered on the promotional material and album sleeve. Exactly the same.

Re:Nothing to do with software !!

[dangitman]

How can people call Nolia a patent troll because some company comes in years after Nokia did all the work and steals the tech??

Because Nolia deliberately named their business with a similar-sounding name, and then tried to make claims on the patents held by Nokia?

Re:Nothing to do with software !!

[bonefry]

Because the manufacturer of the related hardware isn't the one that's a threat to Nokia. Apple is.
They are designing the iPhone, they are the ones getting most of the profit.

People are calling Nokia a patent-troll, but Apple deserves this. They have patents on multi-touch gestures and because of that competitors (like Android) can't implement features requiring multi-touch.

Want a free pass? Learn to play nice then.

Re:Nothing to do with software !!

[crwl]

People are calling Nokia a patent-troll, but Apple deserves this. They have patents on multi-touch gestures and because of that competitors (like Android) can't implement features requiring multi-touch.

That's ridiculous. There are Android phones with multi-touch gestures; stuff like that predate the iPhone by decades.

Re:Two way street

[lymond01]

Not that I've read the story or anything, but my guess is they made a bunch of the products that Apple has tucked in a shiny case with superior GUI. Apple may be standing on Nokia's shoulders here. Imagine you develop a teleportation device -- it would revolutionize the world. You patent it. Then Apple goes and builds a phone that you can point at an object and teleport it to a person with another phone, using your patent. They make billions of dollars because of it, but you're still broke because they didn't license your property.

Is this a problem? Only if you don't think ideas are cheap. People invent and patent things all the time. But that doesn't necessarily mean money in the bank, if you don't strike a deal to make that money. Invention is the very first step and patenting is a way to merely a way to protect your idea while you go look for financing to make it real.

Nokia made their product off their tech. It's not as popular as the iPhone. Do they deserve to get some of the iPhone's share of money?

Re:Two way street

[pak9rabid]

Actually, every big corp which holds patents MUST sue to protect their patents, or they will lose the right to them. If they do not do due diligence in protecting their patents, then eventually someone can use the patents and say in court that the patent owners were not protecting their patents property rights, so the patents were in the public domain. Patents only mean that you can sue to protect them. If you don't sue, you lose them.

sed 's/patents/trademarks/g' and you have a valid assertion.

IIMNAL

You don't say.

Interface patents.

[WiiVault]

Apple has a lot of patents on basic UI. They have for decades. Thankfully Apple is historically not a terribly litigious company (there are exceptions). But I'm certain that in todays patent system they have plenty of ammo against Nokia.

Re:So confused about who to root for...

[sbeckstead]

Obviously you have never been contacted by a patent troll.
You speak nonsense they always try to get money before they sue.
Cheaper cost of funds.

It is time...

[BlueBoxSW.com]

It is time for the FTC and the FCC to break up the illegal phone/carrier bundling that is so prevalent in the marketplace.

If this happened, these lawsuits wouldn't matter.

Let me but a 3G phone and use it on any 3G network.

Let me buy a 2.5G phone and use it on any 2.5G network.

Let the phone makers compete with the phone makers.

Let the carriers compete with the carriers.

Anyone tries to make a phone with proprietary technology that runs on only one network, let the market tell them where to put their phones.

Re:It is time...

[demachina]

This patent suit has NOTHING to do with phone/carrier bundling as nearly as I can tell. GSM is patented by Nokia and CDMA is patented by Qualcomm and those are the deployed cell phone RF standards. If you are building a cell phone deploying on either network you have to license them, Apple certainly knew that going in.

You could make a case for developing a new, open cell phone RF standard, and then deploy it all over the world. High frequency RF communication and analog circuits aren't exactly trivial to develop though. You would need billions in R&D funding from someplace, it would be challenging to develop without stepping on existing patents and it would take years to develop and then years more and billions more to deploy.

Like it or not GSM and CDMA are the standards that are here now, everyone knows it, Apple knew it when they started thinking about iPhone, and they should have dealt with the licenses back then, instead of now when it will be a train wreck.

Re:Two way street

[demachina]

OK, the kernel is awesome, its just developing apps for that is primitive, and about 10 years behind the times at this point ;)

Re:There's That Progress in Science & the Usef

[Doc Ruby]

Nokia doesn't need unlimited patent time to recoup its money invested in the invention. That's the problem with the patent system: it doesn't limit the monopoly to what's necessary to protect investment to produce the invention. Instead, it grants these monopolies to maximize profit, even at the expense of the progress that is its only justification for abridging our free expression rights.

If patents required an auditable statement of the investment at registration time, then expired the patent when, say, double (or 10x, still a huge cut) that investment were recouped in revenue, then they might balance the compromise and favor progress, not just profits at the expense of progress.

Re:There's That Progress in Science & the Usef

[Doc Ruby]

Most tech patents don't need 20 years to recoup the investment. There's very few worthwhile patents that need that much time. 5 years is a long time for actual electronics patents that are narrow enough to protect a specific mechanism, which is all that legitimately promotes the progress that is reason to compromise our free expression rights.

As for the current patent regime's preventing submarine patents, I certainly have heard about dozens of them squeezing money, inhibiting progress, in the past 14 years since the current regime was installed.

how dare they are

[donguz]

Steve Jobs is the one who invented cell phones,

Re:how dare they are

[JAlexoi]

And you will love BB.

not surprising

[jipn4]

Apple's R&D investment is far below industry average, and most of that is "D", not "R". Apple essentially doesn't publish and doesn't support university research. If all companies were as stingy as Apple when it comes to R&D, computer science research would be in deep trouble. Nokia, on the other hand, has the largest R&D investment in Europe, many times that of Apple.

Apple can only make nice products because other companies and universities have invested a hell of a lot of money and time inventing the things that Apple then assembles into products. That model is not sustainable, and I can see why companies like Nokia are getting litigious over it.

Re:not surprising

[samkass]

Nokia's revenues are also twice as big as Apple's and they generate more profit per quarter than Apple. And considering Apple's revenues have doubled over the last 2 years, you have to give them some leeway for ramping up their R&D, which has in fact risen 55% in the last year. Apple isn't exactly resting on its or anyone else's laurels.

Dell is closer in revenues to Nokia than Apple is, yet Dell spends almost half of what Apple does on R&D. HP is almost 4x as big as Apple yet spends less than 3x as much as Apple on R&D.

In short, I think your statement that Apple spends well below the "industry average" (where are you getting your "industry average" numbers?) is specious at best. There are companies that spend greater percentages of their revenue on R&D and Nokia is certainly one of them, as is IBM and Microsoft, but Apple is no lightweight in the R&D department and NONE of those other companies are expanding their R&D spending as fast as Apple.

Re:not surprising

[pHus10n]

I suppose publishing the tech for Grand Central doesn't count?

If you're going to bash, at least be correct.

Re:not surprising

[indiechild]

What a load of bullshit. So Apple's numerous contributions to open source don't count?

I don't see what what is so warm and fuzzy about Nokia developing and then patenting their own technologies is anyway. That's exactly what Apple is doing. How are they more caring and sharing than Apple?

Re:not surprising

[intheshelter]

Nice try there troll, but it doesn't hold water. Ever heard of Firewire? Or that now light wave connector in the news a couple of weeks ago? Or how about all the innovation involved in creating the industry leading computer hardware designs. Sorry, but you're full of shit!

Re:not surprising

[macs4all]

Apple's R&D investment is far below industry average, and most of that is "D", not "R".

ORLY?

Then why, pray tell, do they far out-innovate most other tech companies? Please cite the source for your otherwise baseless bashing.

If all companies were as stingy as Apple when it comes to R&D, computer science research would be in deep trouble.

So, I guess all the R&D that Apple has released as Open Source is being "stingy" with R&D (launchd, iCal, Calendar Server, bonjour, Darwin, webkit, Grand Central Dispatch, etc.) and all the R&D that Apple has contributed to ongoing F/OSS projects (zfs fixes, Khtml fixes, CUPS (yes, I know they bought CUPS, but they still leave it Open Source), Apache fixes, etc.) is also being stingy with R&D.

Oh, and that doesn't even count the echnology that Apple released into the Public Domain, long before their was a term for "Open Source" (AppleTalk and OpenDoc come to mind, and I know there are others I can't recall off hand). Yes, the world would be in a sorry state if all companies were as "stingy" with their R&D as Apple...

Apple can only make nice products because other companies and universities have invested a hell of a lot of money and time inventing the things that Apple then assembles into products.

So, I guess Nokia invented the transistor, the integrated circuit, Li-ion batteries, epoxy, polycarbonate plastics, LCDs, the capacitor, surface mount technology, the resistor, the microprocessor, flash memory, SRAM memory, to name but a few of the "nice products" that Nokia "then assembles into products.", right?

That model is not sustainable

Hmmm. Seems to be working well for not only Apple (since their stock just closed at an all-time high (and in this economy!)), but for all of the tech sector as well. Again, cite a source that says that Apple's business model is "unsustainable".

I can see why companies like Nokia are getting litigious over it.

Really? Because it just looks like going after the deep pockets to me...

Re:Two way street

[the plant doctor]

Possibly because the N900 hasn't even been released yet? It's not due out until sometime next month.

Re:So confused about who to root for...

[rattaroaz]

Is it really patent trolling?

No. Apple spokesperson did come out saying patents and the patent system is perfectly fine, so they would agree with this lawsuit.

Maybe Nokia doesn't want $$

[kmahan]

Or maybe in the case of Apple Nokia isn't trying for financial licensing, but something like an agreement to cross license patents -- so that Nokia would get access to Apple's patents.

I could see why Apple wouldn't want to do that.

Re:Two way street

[Apotekaren]

Because the N900 launched like... This week? And the iPhone launched over 2 years ago?
Full disclosure: I'm buying the N900 asap, probably next month.

Re:There's That Progress in Science & the Usef

[Red Flayer]

As for the current patent regime's preventing submarine patents, I certainly have heard about dozens of them squeezing money, inhibiting progress, in the past 14 years since the current regime was installed.

A submarine patent is a very specific type of process-abuse patent. Yes, patents have been used to squeeze money and, collaterally, inhibit progress since 1995. But that is not enough for a patent to be called a submarine patent.

A submarine patent was one that was intentionally kept pending for a long time -- since the "timer" on the expiration of the patent only started once the patent was granted, this allowed companies to have a longer time with their invention covered by patent protection (say, 6-7 years pending, then the full 17 once the patent was granted). Even more perniciously, a company would ignore the use of the patent-pending invention by other companies until the patent was granted, and then: *POW* -- up comes the periscope and the torpedoes, with the invention already a core part of the competitor's business.

Re:Two way street

[KillerBob]

The geeks buy it so they can do something Linux-y on it, but they actually USE iPhones because they work and are trivial to use.

I'm assuming you're just trolling, but still...

1) The N900 isn't on the market yet. It's due to be released in the US next month, and later in the rest of the world's markets.

2) The N900 does have an Exchange client, according to their marketspeak. Considering rules regarding marketspeak matching reality on things like that, I'd assume that they speak the truth.

3) The iPhone is popular because it has the cool factor. If you want something that's actually useable, the iPhone isn't bad, but most people in business actually have a Crackberry.

4) While it's personal preference, I'm actually quite happy with my Android-running HTC Dream. All of the apps are free, it's reasonably fast for downloads/google maps, it came with a 2GB SD card (which is big enough, for now), and I've got it set up to poll my home e-mail/gmail on a regular basis. I've got all of the functionality of a Blackberry that I'd want, and then some. Android's the new kid on the block, but from what I've seen, it's a definite competitor to the iPhone's popularity.

Apple makes chips?

[cadience]

If this stuff is hardware, are you telling me that Apple has fabricated the chips for this? Not impossible, but seems unlikely.

Re:Two way street

[jhol13]

lawyers use these patents as a sort of negotiation tool.

You mean, of course, ... sort of Sampo.

(Wikipedia is shit, Sampo is most likely kinda (fake?) money making machine (with super powers - it is mythology after all).

Re:So confused about who to root for...

[nomadic]

Is it really not patent trolling.

By that standard anyone trying to enforce a patent is a patent troll.

just business

[dUN82]

Yep, text book case how to run a successful business if you cannot beat them in business...

I attended Qt Developers Days in Munich this year

[Tanuki64]

There Nokia presented among other new techniques the 'declarative ui' for Qt. Very powerful stuff. A dozen or two lines of code and even a mediocre programmer can 'recreate' most if not all of the iPhone user interface. In the past Apple did threaten to sue groups/companies when it thought they came too close to the Apple look and feel. In countries where software patents are valid Apple should have a very good stand. So I admit I speculate, but I would not be surprised if there was some sort of thread from Apple and this is the counter reaction from Nokia. Now they probably evaluate and compare their patents and if none of them has a clear advantage the problem will be settled more or less peacefully.

Re:Two way street

[Sandbags]

No, that only applies to Trademarks, not patents. Even with trademarks, you have to prove that either you completed due dilligence to identify if the trademark was in use (which is easy), or that the other company had not previously enforced a violation they were AWARE of, (which is basically impossible).

patents are held regardless of infringement. The only things that invalidate patents are things that show the patent should never have been issued in the first place (prior art, obvious mental jumps, non-original ideas, too broad patent, etc).

This is a simplification, but gets the idea across.

Re:Two way street

[peragrin]

Until recently apple only spec'd hardwAre to other suppliers. So while apple is marketing the apple didn't build it and in the case of hardare ordered the chips from some one who had to pay Nokia.

In your example apple still hasto pay at least forthe hardwareto teleport objects. Thoughapple pays a randon Chinese company to buy the chips, who in theroy hasto pay you royalties. However china doesn't abide those terms. Sometimes.

Re:Two way street

[JStegmaier]

Bullshit. If five-star restaurants are so good, why are people eating at McDonalds 10x as much?

Bullshit. If Mac OSX is so good, why are people buying 10x as many Windows PCs?

Ad infinitum.

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[account_deleted]

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Re:So confused about who to root for...

[Sandbags]

Apple doesn't make the chip, only the case holding it and the software using it.

Dell doesn't make the chip, only the netbook with an integrated GSM adapter and Microsoft's OS and someone else's drivers using it. They're not paying nokia either, but yet, no lawsuit there?

Also, $40B is not what was paid on designing the GSM system, that's what was paid for its complete deployment, plus some finance magic to make the number much bigger... What is relevent only is:

A) is apple a direct or indirect infringer on the patents? B) Was Apple aware if they are a direct infringer? (and if not, was due dillegence documented completely). C) If they are found in WILLFUL violation, or if the violation was brought to their attention and they made no reasonable offer for comensation, what is the "fair" royalty (typically defined by a slightly higher than average royalty based on the royalty collected from all other payers).

If Apple is knowingly and willfully infringing, even prior to nokia getting involved directly (we doubt that unless Apple's patent lawyers felt thaey had a GREAT case getting the patent overturned, but if they did, they would have already started that process), then the penalty will be about 10 times the license cost, maybe a lot more. If they unknowingly infringed (after thorough and well documented discovvery and due dilligence, which apple is known to be one of the best in the world at), and they eventual even up in discussion with nokia, they'll be ordered to pay between a fair rate, and 3 times the rate tops. If nokia's patents get thrown out, Apple wins a legal payment for their expensive lawyers from nokia, and likely a countersuit for defamation, and nokia looses several strong patents they use as leverage to collect large royalties (which everyone else can also immediately stop paying).

Given Apple's history of successful defence and strong due dillegence processes, Nokia might at best earn what apple is offering plus a small sum, minus their likely much larger legal fees (net loss vs apple's offer), or they'll loose a lot of money and some patents (and maybe other non-enforces but related patents too). This is not a good plan for nokia unless that have a GREAT case against apple they're not talking about (which they would be).

Apple spent 1.1 billion on R&D in 2008

[SuperKendall]

http://www.tuaw.com/2008/11/07/apple-adds-staff-boosts-randd-spending-in-fy2008/

Doesn't sound below average to me, at all. Where do you think the new products they produce in a steady stream come from, a nearby magic forest?

Re:Apple spent 1.1 billion on R&D in 2008

[jipn4]

Doesn't sound below average to me, at all.

Well, nevertheless it is:

http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/techbeat/archives/2005/10/does_rd_spendin.html

And almost all of that "R&D" spending is "D", not "R".

Where do you think the new products they produce in a steady stream come from, a nearby magic forest?

Yes: the "nearby magic forest" is called "Silicon Valley". Apple takes the best ideas from the Valley and turns them into products. They leave the research to others.

Unlike Apple, Nokia, IBM, Microsoft etc. actually do good research, they just can't figure out how to turn them into decent products.

Re:Two way street

[kamochan]

It's a realtime microkernel with an event-driven userspace API, a full POSIX implementation.

You are actually quite right. In its own scary way, it's the pinnacle of best engineering effort of the 90s.

How's your full POSIX API handling e.g. non-blocking sockets, these days?

Re:Two way street

[daveime]

I'm sure people but 10x more McDonalds than Fillet Mignon in Blue Cheese Sauce ... your point is ?

Re:Two way street

[FloydTheDroid]

One single apple advocate may not want to play the popularity card.

There, fixed that for you.

Re:Two way street

[nolife]

Apple has one of the best due dilligence and patent defence legal teams in the world.

Dude, come on. How do you even begin to attempt to prove a statement like that?

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Two way street

[faragon]

Because it is not available in the stores?

In Europe it is not available yet, and it is expected for late October or first week of November.

Re:Why are people this much against patents?

[Dan Ost]

When you're used to hating something in one context, it's very easy to hate it in another.

Understanding the difference between 2 contexts and then reevaluating whether your position makes sense in the new context isn't something that people are naturally inclined to do unless it comes back to bite them in the ass. Then sometimes they learn.

here are the numbers

[jipn4]

where are you getting your "industry average" numbers?

The numbers come from Booz Allen Hamilton and Business Week:

http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/techbeat/archives/2005/10/does_rd_spendin.html

Apple's R&D to sales ratio is 5.9%, computer industry average is 7.6%.

Apple is no lightweight in the R&D department and NONE of those other companies are expanding their R&D spending as fast as Apple.

Apple spends money development, but not much on research; Apple's research output according to the usual objective measures (publications and citations) is non-existent.

Re:here are the numbers

[garote]

With all due respect, your statistic does not support your claim. "R&D to sales" is a measure of the effectiveness of a company's effort to convert R&D into sales. If that ratio is low, all the better. You originally claimed that "Apple's R&D investment is far below industry average". That claim has been refuted in the grandparent to this post. Now you want to divorce the "R" from the "D" to complain that Apple doesn't publish papers or have its papers cited. That's an entirely different subject.

What's your point? If you want to argue that Apple is doing a disservice to the world of technology, you need a better yardstick than "papers published". Need I remind you that Apple basically invented the home computer, basically invented the PDA, and has recently completely re-energized the smartphone industry? Those accomplishments have had obvious penumbral effects.

Re:here are the numbers

[ceoyoyo]

Apple's research contribution isn't quite nonexistent. I've personally cited them at least twice in published papers. WWDC also has a sizeable scientific community component that has lately been turning into a sort of mini scientific conference, including poster sessions.

Re:here are the numbers

[tyrione]

With all due respect, your statistic does not support your claim. "R&D to sales" is a measure of the effectiveness of a company's effort to convert R&D into sales. If that ratio is low, all the better. You originally claimed that "Apple's R&D investment is far below industry average". That claim has been refuted in the grandparent to this post. Now you want to divorce the "R" from the "D" to complain that Apple doesn't publish papers or have its papers cited. That's an entirely different subject.

What's your point? If you want to argue that Apple is doing a disservice to the world of technology, you need a better yardstick than "papers published". Need I remind you that Apple basically invented the home computer, basically invented the PDA, and has recently completely re-energized the smartphone industry? Those accomplishments have had obvious penumbral effects.

I guess his point should be that he sucks at statistical relationships and how they may or may not support his theory. That R&D to sales is asinine. Boeing's R&D to sales sees them going into the crapper with losing $1.6 Billion this quarter. I suppose they just don't have very effective/efficient/competent R&D and it's showing.

Re:here are the numbers

[vallette]

Two things. First, the article you cite is 4 years old. I'm not saying I have better numbers but I'm sure newer numbers are out there and they may tell a different story. Second, I work for a good sized scientific and engineering society which has a number of Apple employees as both authors and conference organizers so your assertion that their "... research output ... is non-existent" is a bit of stretch.

Re:here are the numbers

[jipn4]

With all due respect, your statistic does not support your claim. "R&D to sales" is a measure of the effectiveness of a company's effort to convert R&D into sales. ... That claim has been refuted in the grandparent to this post

Oh, stop drinking the magic cool-aid and distorting reality. Apple's R&D investment is low in absolute numbers, relative to sales, and relative to company size. And Apple's research output is essentially non-existent by any objective measure.

Now you want to divorce the "R" from the "D"

I have consistently pointed out that Apple invests in "D" but almost nothing in "R".

Need I remind you that Apple basically invented the home computer, basically invented the PDA, and has recently completely re-energized the smartphone industry? Those accomplishments have had obvious penumbral effects.

Apple did none of those things. All their major products were copies of technologies and devices invented elsewhere, and Apple has gotten into trouble and disrepute over that more than once.

If you want to argue that Apple is doing a disservice to the world of technology, you need a better yardstick than "papers published".

I'm only pointing out that Nokia's lawsuit is consistent and plausible with what we know about Apple's actual R&D strategy.

Re:here are the numbers

[jipn4]

Show me significant, peer-reviewed research coming out of Apple, and citations thereof. It's almost non-existent. Microsoft, IBM, Google--they all have it--just not Apple.

Re:here are the numbers

[ceoyoyo]

http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/freeabs_all.jsp?arnumber=1186532

http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/freeabs_all.jsp?arnumber=1328881

There are a couple direct from Apple. Here is a list of the posters presented at the last WWDC:

http://www.apple.com/science/poster/

Re:here are the numbers

[Uberbah]

...crickets.

Damn, looks like your facts messed up his storyline.

Re:here are the numbers

[ceoyoyo]

It was pretty tough too. I had to type "Apple Cupertino" into Google scholar.

For those who are interested, when I was in grad school Apple brought me out to Cupertino for a three day workshop along with half a dozen other researchers (mostly in genetics) where we had access to most of their engineers to help us optimize our code for their machines. That work did result in a peer reviewed journal paper, although Apple is only mentioned as a credit for using their computers. I'm sure there are quite a few other papers like that.

Apple may not publish directly much, but they have taken an active interest in supporting research. Take a look at that WWDC poster session link I posted two levels up if you want to see some examples.

Re:here are the numbers

[jipn4]

Now compare that with some other companies:

http://research.google.com/pubs/papers.html

http://research.microsoft.com/apps/dp/pu/publications.aspx#p=1&ps=36&so=0&sb=d&fr=&to=&fd=&td=&rt=&f=ms&a=&pn=&pa=&pd=

http://domino.research.ibm.com/library/cyberdig.nsf/recent (last 30 days!)

http://www.parc.com/publications/

http://research.nokia.com/

Two conference publications by Apple employee is a joke for a company the size of Apple. Apple doesn't even have a site where they show their research.

(Apple used to have a research lab with real researchers and publications in the 1990's, but they closed it.)

And the poster session is not the output of R&D by Apple, it's people talking about using Apple products in their work.

Re:here are the numbers

[dkf]

Apple may not publish directly much, but they have taken an active interest in supporting research. Take a look at that WWDC poster session link I posted two levels up if you want to see some examples.

So you've established that it's non-zero. Now compare levels of investment in R&D with those in the rest of the industry, with a particular focus on mobile equipment manufacturers for preference (given this story).

Re:here are the numbers

[bonefry]

> Apple basically invented the home computer

That's rich :)

They revolutionized the home computer with a GUI interface model stolen from Xerox, they lowered the price of the hardware (Woz was a wizard after all), but they haven't invented it.

The first home computer intended for consumers was from Altair - aprox. one year before Apple I was released. And the credits for the "home computer" as it is today cannot be attributed to a single individual or company. Far from it.

But then I guess it's fashionable to credit ol' mighty Steve for everything that's shiny.

Re:here are the numbers

[shilly]

Talk about selective quotation!! I just read the article you linked to, and who would have known it from what you've written, but the Booz report's conclusion was a glowingly *positive* reference to Apple's ability to spend its R&D on creating great products -- what the report calls "an innovation machine". This is the very same paragraph from which you quoted that Apple's R&D:sales ratio was below that of its competitors. By the way, that report was from 2005 -- the numbers may have changed since.

I also want to point out the spectacular idiocy of assessing the value of a *commercial* organisation's R&D in terms of research papers published. Has it not occurred to you that Apple may be -- like all its competitors -- doing some work that it chooses not to publish?

Finally, to claim that Apple does effectively no original research and is only about development is just mindbogglingly silly and at variance with the facts. Apple's products of course draw on ideas and developments elsewhere in the industry, but the truth is, whether patent lawyers like it or not, there is nothing new under the sun and any idea you can conceive of has almost certainly been thought of by someone else. What makes the difference is making the ideas into something meaningful -- your moral universe in which "research is praiseworthy, development is to be sneered at" is both silly and draws far too sharp a distinction between the concepts. Why should it detract from Apple's achievement if some other organisation or academic had some kind of implementation of multitouch running? Self-evidently, Apple's was the first implementation that was well-thought-through enough to work for a typical consumer: the adoption curve for multitouch devices would show effectively none in use prior to the iPhone and many millions in use afterwards.

Re:here are the numbers

[macs4all]

> Apple basically invented the home computer

That's rich :)

They revolutionized the home computer with a GUI interface model stolen from Xerox, they lowered the price of the hardware (Woz was a wizard after all), but they haven't invented it.

Apple stole nothing. Apple PAID Xerox for the technology (which was actually barely useable until Andy Hertzfeld, Randy Wigginton, Jef Raskin, Steve Capps, and others at Apple made some fundamental changes and improvements).

The first home computer intended for consumers was from Altair - aprox. one year before Apple I was released. And the credits for the "home computer" as it is today cannot be attributed to a single individual or company. Far from it.

The last part of your statement is true; however, Steve Wozniak (and hence, Apple) is, however, rightfully credited at making the home computer USEABLE, by having a ROM-based monitor "OS" on-board. The Apple 1 (which I own) WAS the first home computer (or any computer) you could simply turn on and start using, without having to manually toggle in a bootloader using address and data switches (an idea stolen from the PDP-8, while we're talking about "stolen" technology), then load in a paper tape (or, if you were a real masochist, you could simply toggle in the software...)

Re:here are the numbers

[frederickroyceperez]

Purchased from Xerox ....

Re:here are the numbers

[JAlexoi]

Apple is a multi-industrial company. In mobile telecommunications market, they are definitely far below average R&D and have totally dropped off R part. And OP has directly sated that Apple does little R in R&D, so please "Now you want to divorce "R" from the "D"" part is a bit too late.

Re:Two way street

[Sandbags]

sort of general knowledge, based on their history of successful patent attacks against other companies, successful ratio of patent defenses againt other firms, success rate in having patents revoked, and success in negotiating patent disputes away without entering court.

They file HUNDREDS of patents anually, bested last year only by IBM. They are one of a handful of companies with not just a full time legal staff dedicated to patents, but an entire depertment of researchers, filers, lawyers, patent designers, and more.

Nokia Joke

[stimpleton]

Q: Whats the difference between Nokia and Concorde.

A: Nothing. Both are foriegn(to the US) companies that make(or made) innovative products based on their own R&D. Both were(and are) being lobbied out of the US market. Concorde had its noise issue laws bought in specifically for it, Nokia is not a prefered provider.

Thats where the real battle front is for Nokia, and Apple is well postioned to bend ears in Washington.

Re:Two way street

[E IS mC(Square)]

That explains why Britney Spears is regarded one of all time best singers!!

Wait, you must be one of those people suffering from so much inferiority complex that they have to follow the majority to feel good about themselves.

Re:Two way street

[jhol13]

Full POSIX ... so where is fork()? Or ksh (or any other POSIX.1 compatible shell)?

I think you have no clue how diverse different POSIXes are.

Re:Two way street

[E IS mC(Square)]

well, if you stop sucking and being an apple fanbois, we may take you a bit more seriously then your bold 'general knowledge' statements.

Humorous

[TheJodster]

I find it both entertaining and comical when the alligators start eating each other. This reminds me of when RIM got sued over push email technology and lost. Now somebody get the popcorn going and I'll fetch the lawn chairs. This will be good!

Re:So confused about who to root for...

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple has meaner lawyers than the other manufacturers.

Wrong again, read your link

[SuperKendall]

Well, nevertheless it is:...

Your own link says you are wrong.

If you care to read it, you'd find it quotes 2004 figures. You'll find mind is much more current since I didn't just take the first link off Google, and the fact that Apple more than doubled 2007 R&D spending while your link indicates in 2004 they were just a few percentage points behind, shows that in fact they are ahead of average.

On a side note, I question the wisdom of saying that Apple is not spending enough on R&D when they are the leader in innovation in the music, computer and now smartphone industry. All companies should throttle back to these levels if they could achieve the same results! Meanwhile Microsoft is spending a huge amount more than Apple and they give us the Table Computer, Microsoft Bob and Dolly The Clone Store.

Apple takes the best ideas from the Valley and turns them into products.

If you think that is all they do, enjoy being continually astounded at their multiple successes.

Unlike Apple, Nokia, IBM, Microsoft etc. actually do good research

I define good as useful. Even basic research is fundamentally useful because it allows for progress that could not be made without it. IBM is well ahead of any of the ones on your list. Microsoft is a far cry from this lofty goal. Nokia is busily recreate Android, now even if they spend more in R&D is that honestly a better use of funds than what Apple is doing? At least the end result is unique.

Yes Apple does not do as much basic research - but they are doing some, remember they bought a chip maker and seek to improve low power chips for multiple devices. They are also contributing at a fairly low level to compiler technologies like LLVM, which to my mind also counts as publishing just as much as any journal - it's simply a more practical form.

It's plain to see you have a big up your ass about Apple, and it will let you see nothing they do as any good. That is a shame.

Re:Wrong again, read your link

[tyrione]

You might as well be arguing with him about whether his hair is on fire. It seems to be blind to reason.

Once it popped into my head, I couldn't resist...

[joeyblades]

Getting sued for patent infringement?... There's an app for that!

Re:Two way street

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Popularity != Quality

When talking about something as complex as a smart-phone, quality is not an objective measurement.

Linux, for example, is technically superior to Windows, but its 'gaming quality' is very poor.

Won't this upset the natural order of things?

[Shag]

Is nokia a patent troll?

They didn't used to be, but if they're making the news for suing a competitor, instead of making the news for releasing products that compete, it kind of makes me wonder.

Full Disclosure: I own 1 Nokia and 1 iPhone, and have in the past owned 4 other Nokias, 1 Sony-Ericsson, and 1 Palm Treo.

Re:Two way street

[howlingmadhowie]

no, no and a thousand times no. patents are (were) not about ideas. they are (were) about implementations of ideas. everybody can have a good idea. until they make a working implementation of it, that idea is worth nothing.

Re:Two way street

[mabhatter654]

You pointed out the most likely situation. Of those 40 companies some are chip makers, OEMs, tower builders, and telcos. What you get is a "triple dipping" situation where the "club" is demanding royalties from each part of the process. Chip maker has to have a patent for the "chip", OEM has to have a patent for the chip attached to an antenna using software, Tower builder has to have a patent to send and receive the signal, Telco has to have a patent to route the signal. Even though you have paid a patent on the "chip" that does everything and you put one at both ends, it doesn't count because you don't have the "whole" license... only the chipmaker's right to "build" the chip. You need to pay again to USE the chip.... This is how MP3 keeps being the undead patent zombie. They want to you pay to be "in the club" then you don't have to worry about such "technicalities" but then you usually have to cross-license ALL your stuff to get in.

Apple most likely went directly to Broadcom and AT&T and cross-licensed with just those two players to share the patents they had access to (and added another 100 just for iPhone). Now Nokia is upset the other two players are letting Apple in without "joining the club" first. It's all a game of contracts that were for "joining the club" but have loopholes all over that you have to play ball only with the club and certain players get "more fair" treatment than others.

Money money money

[ForMeToPoopOn]

Just look at the recent financial news: Apple is making tons of $$$, Nokia is in the red.

Next thing, Nokia sues Apple.

Coincidence?

I think NOT!

Re:Two way street

[mabhatter654]

Market share is not everything.

Would you like to be selling $80 phones (Nokia) or $500 phones(iPhone)? Which makes more profitable return on investment put in? THAT is the most important thing in business... the guy who uses my $1 to bring back $1.50 is good... the guy who uses my 1$ and brings back $3 is better, even if their company is way smaller.

Re:So confused about who to root for...

[sbeckstead]

BINGO give that man a pony!

One caveat

[microbox]

Think about it this way: would you rather have a patented standard everyone contributes to or have Nokia and Samsung privately decide on something they'll use together and shut everyone else out?

I agree with a caveat. Patents in standards should never become barriers to entering a market. Of course, that ain't what this case is about.

Funny image....

[ekool]

Funny image here: http://www.talkiphone.com/nokia-suing-apple-for-patent-infringement-1664/

http://www.talkiphone.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/nokia-suing-apple1.gif

Re:Two way street

[AVee]

Interestingly, the scroll and bounce back behaviour described in that article is in the N900 interface as well.

Just try a google search

[Anonymous Coward]

If you honestly can't name any important OS contributions from Nokia, you *really* aren't paying any attention.

Re:Just try a google search

[Uberbah]

Or he doesn't have a Nokia, so why bother looking up stuff for a device you don't have? Stop being a pretentious ass.

Re:Two way street

[tyrione]

well, if you stop sucking and being an apple fanbois, we may take you a bit more seriously then your bold 'general knowledge' statements.

Having worked for Steve at NeXT and Apple I can attest that Apple's Legal Department is vast, top knotch and has vast resources at their disposal to make sure all R&D passes far more than the sniff test. It's a streamlined, but vastly detailed process when Apple goes to patent any IP.

Re:Why are people this much against patents?

[rtfa-troll]

Seeing all the replies here, I am left wondering why people hate patents so much.

I think that it's because your description is quite idealistic and doesn't work in real life. Patent lawsuits require huge amounts of capital and so are simply not available to the average small doctor inventor. This means that only big companies can use patents and the small inventor is left at the bottom of a delivery chain which gives him nothing. Secondly patents are mostly nullified in cross licensing agreements. Each of the main players in an industry will agree with the others to royalty free or fixed royalty use of each other's patents. Any new player has to come in and negotiate from a much weaker stance, ending up paying much more. Patents end up re-inforcing the power of big compaies.

there are other issues also: patent lawyers are continually trying to push patents where they don't belong (e.g. software or living organisms) and end up coming across as seriously evil.

Re:Translation: Apple is Killing Nokia.

[PeanutButterBreath]

Correction: Everyone wants a phone that draws heavily from Nokia's tech. Apple just doesn't want to pay Nokia for using that tech to build the iPhone.

Re:Two way street

[DrDitto]

Linux, for example, is technically superior to Windows, but its 'gaming quality' is very poor.

Care to back that statement up? You might be surprised at how "technically superior" the Linux kernel is compared to the Windows 2008 Server kernel. In fact you might be surprised at how inferior the Linux kernel might actually be...

Re:Two way street

[R3d M3rcury]

"SHIT: 10,000,000 flies can't be wrong."

Re:So confused about who to root for...

[jrumney]

If Nokia isn't making the parts manufacturer pay for the per-unit license, it seems like a bit of oversight on their part and adds complexity to licensing.

In most cases like this, the parts are manufactured in China, where the patent either isn't valid or is impossible to enforce, as is the final product. The only opportunity that Nokia has to go after the infringement is when the final product is imported to the US or other country where their patent can be enforced, and then they can go after the importer (in this case Apple themselves). As a long time manufacturer of end products, Apple should be familiar with this situation, and do their due diligence on the parts they are buying.

Re:Two way street

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Linux, for example, is technically superior to Windows, but its 'gaming quality' is very poor.

Care to back that statement up? You might be surprised at how "technically superior" the Linux kernel is compared to the Windows 2008 Server kernel. In fact you might be surprised at how inferior the Linux kernel might actually be...

The whole point of my post was that 'quality' is subjective. All it takes is for a kernel to have an advantage that works in your favor to be 'superior'.

To put it another way: Higher quality products don't lose because people are masochists.

Acronym fail

[Anonymous Coward]

It's UMTS, not "UTMS".

Just one more example that Nokia has lost its edge

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't like Apple either, their "we control everything" -approach is so antithesis to all we geeks like.
But, it is clear that Nokia has lost its edge in the smart phone segment, therefore in the
whole phone business altogether. It is hard to say, if they can grab the market back with
Maemo platform, but Apple and Google have a huge head start. I have to say that given the probability that
Maemo will tank also, I am rooting for Android. At least it does not have those STUPID mandatory sign your
binaries thing like S60v3. Shit! Just learned that selfsigned S60 binaries do NOT have multimedia
capability (no access to camera API etc).

Nokia actually stole IPR from a little company

[singlevalley]

named IDCC, and is fighting the cases in court. This is hilarious..nokia just needs to be banned from selling their handsets in USA...

Re:Nokia actually stole IPR from a little company

[Eunuchswear]

Uh, Nokia just won the case against IDCC.

Apple had licensed the patents from IDCC, that's why Nokia want the money.

http://www.electronista.com/articles/09/10/17/itc.finds.nokia.not.violating.3g.patents/

Re:There's That Progress in Science & the Usef

[Too Much Noise]

Right. It wasn't that obvious in your initial post, but the strawman is plain to see now. How is this about unlimited time for patents? If Nokia has legitimate patents (as other said, they're not exactly a patent troll - they do have products and a large R&D budget) then it's their duty to the shareholders to sue Apple if Apple uses their tech without a license. To see that, look at the sales drop that Ericsson just reported yesterday (Ericsson being the largest manufacturer of wireless telco equipment) due to cheap Chinese competition - you think the Chinese are paying royalties for their products? Or, to look at Apple itself for an example, take their suit of Psystar - no license to distribute OSX on non-Apple hw, bang! lawsuit.

So drop your strawman about unlimited time patents (as an aside - I think the current time limit is already too long and harms competition, but that's a thorny issue and not at stake here) and ask yourself instead whether the patents are valid and the suit legitimate. Apple being Apple has no bearing on whether they're right or wrong in this.

Re:Two way street

[c4t3y3]

Apple advocates may not want to play the popularity card. By that standard, MacOS must suck, cuz Windows derivatives are 18 times more popular.

Apple products target the high end market which is smaller in itself. Still, when the iPhone collects a third of handset industry profits and tops the consumer satisfaction surveys, it means it is one of the greatest products of all time.

Re:Two way street

[rdnetto]

Since you seem to be in the know, I just have to ask: any word on when it'll be released in Australia?

Re:Two way street

[unwastaken]

Apple bad, Nokia good when we are talking about mobil phones. Nokias N900 has great Linux Comunity, and they are writing a Free cell phone communication stack ofono.

I had to read this a couple times, trying to figure out why an open sourced free cell implementation on a phone would get you so excited.

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

[jotaeleemeese]

"Actually, every big corp which holds patents MUST sue to protect their patent"

Nope, they must not.

You are thinking trademarks.

You don't lose the right to your patent if you don't defend it, you can start defending it whenever you feel like it, if at all, irrespective of what you do the patent remains yours.

Oh well...

[jotaeleemeese]

Since Nokia has been making mobile phones way before Apple even thought about it, I think having a gut feeling favoring Nokia is just fair.

Software patents are not valid everywhere.

[jotaeleemeese]

It would be mightily unwise to try to use them, they could end with no access to the EU market.

Re:Two way street

[mdwh2]

Citation needed? You're comparing a single model, to an entire company's range (the "iPhone" is not a single model, although this is a common tactic that Apple use, so they can make it look good by comparing their entire product range, to just single phones from other companies).

However, Nokia's phone sales are immensely larger than Apple's, last time I looked. Feel free to prove me wrong and you right with a reliable source.

Re:Two way street

[mdwh2]

Interesting - I wish we heard more about stuff like this on Slashdot. To think this was once a place where alternative and open systems were publicised, instead of now just being press releases about a closed locked down platform.

"not as popular"?

[mdwh2]

Nokia made their product off their tech. It's not as popular as the iPhone.

This, ladies and gentlemen, should be held up as a sad example of the effect of Apple-only coverage here on Slashdot for the mobile phone market. This poster actually believes that Apple have a bigger share of the market than Nokia. We are actually getting to the stage where, as a result, some geeks have less knowledge of the mobile phone market than lay people.

A quick Google shows some actual figures from 2009 - http://www.mobileburn.com/news.jsp?Id=6191 :

Nokia - 38.6%
Samsung - 16.2%
Motorola - 8.3%
LG - 8.3%
Sony Ericson - 8%
RIM - 1.9%
Apple - 1%

That, ladies and gentlemen, is the reality of the market (if you disagree, make sure you have a reference). You wouldn't know it from Slashdot (when was the last time we had a story about Samsung?)

And to counter the standard replies, please avoid:
* "I'm going to redefine the definition of the market so it includes Apple and some smaller players."
* "I'm going to redefine market share to mean something other than sales, e.g., to mean how much I and Slashdot talk about it."
* "I'm going to ignore your citation, and respond with anecdotal evidence of how I and my friends all seem to have Iphones, therefore it must be more popular, and I get modded up +5 insightful for it."

As for your comments about patents, agreed - now please go and say the same thing to Apple, who also use patents against other companies.

Re:"not as popular"?

[emj]

But the iPhone is the more popular product, it's just too damn expensive. The interesting thing is smartphone market share, which I'm guessing Nokia wins anyways but not by the same margin.

Re:Two way street

[mdwh2]

And indeed, I looked again - see my other comment, showing as of the start of this year, Nokia at 38.6%, Apple at 1%, with a whole load of other companies in between, also far above Apple ( http://www.mobileburn.com/news.jsp?Id=6191 ).

So let's try your statement again:

"If the Iphone is so good, why are people buying 38x as many Nokia phones?"

Fixed that for you.

Re:Why are people this much against patents?

[Troed]

Most of the innovation in the western world is due to patents.

No.

(Yes, I'm a patent holder)

Re:What is this....

[intheshelter]

If you think that the fact that lawsuits are coming out against a huge, profitable, high profile company somehow makes them guilty in all the lawsuits then maybe you should go back to school and learn something. I'm not insinuating Apple is perfect, far from it, but Apple has had a phone out there for 3 years and it's only when Nokia starts bleeding do they come at them? If you can't compete, litigate.

In between

[Mateo_LeFou]

In between the two assertions
1) [GGP] The R&D is worth $40B
and
2) [your synopsis of slashdotjunker] The R&D is worth $0

Stand 39,999,999,999 non-straw-men.

Re:What is this....

[Slash.Poop]

If you think that the fact that lawsuits are coming out from a bleeding Nokia makes them false then maybe you should go back to school and learn something.

See how that works? :-)

Re:So confused about who to root for...

[rufty_tufty]

So you want to rid the world of all patents? Have you any idea of what the world was like before patents?

Re:Two way street

[Tran]

Can't comment on the Nokia N900 , but i can talk about the iphone, Blackberry and Android platform, since between me, my wife and a coworker we have at least one or more of each. I started out using palms and windows mobile devices, but have given up on them over the years.

The iPhone is not popular because it has a cool factor. It is popular because it just works, works simply and most intuitively out of these 3 platforms. It also has the most wide target audience. Both my wife and I have a iPod Touch and like it for what it does and how it does it. We one Mac and several windows and a Linux machine at home, we only use the iPod Touch(es) with the Mac.

The Blackberry is great for business users. But my wife got it ( the 8900) for personal use because of its responsiveness ( over the myTouch Android platform).

When my wife got the Blackberry, I got the myTouch ( yes we are T-Mobile customers). In comparison to the iPhone and Blackberry platforms, the Android platform has been abysmal. I would have returned the device within the 2 week trial period, but the 1.6 update that downloaded the first nite I had the device, made the myTouch usable.

The Android reminds me a lot of using linux. One clicks and wonder if something is going to happen or not. Both the Blackberry and the iPhone give immediate feed back response.
Too often, going back to the home screen from an application leaves one staring at a black screen for too long ( 15-20 seconds).

In the 2-3 years of owning the ipod touch, accumulating 90+ apps, the device/apps glitched on me less than 5 times. In 5 days of using the Android, I have had more force quits than that.
I don't know if there are any UI guidelines for Android developers for touch screens, but some of the apps that come with the base platforms have poor widget choices for this form factor. Just setting the time for an appointment - incrementing/decrementing in individual minutes, and worse, when using the widget, the value one wants to see gets covered by your fingers.
I do like the Android's spell/word recognition system way better than what is on the ipod. It at least gives me words that I need to use, usually the most obvious choice. I don't know what the iPod uses to figure out what word to present, but it is not base on normal English usage ( and English is my second language).

I will keep the Android. I am a Google fan. I don't want a Blackberry, and I don't want to go to the extra expense of having the family on different carriers ( have 4 lines on a family plan). Could I afford the split I would get and use the iPhone.

Re:What is this....

[intheshelter]

Yeah I do, but my observation was relevant, whereas yours was not. Where the hell was Nokia's lawsuit 3 years ago? It's only when they are starting to feel the pinch from the iPhone juggernaut that they pull the patent lawsuit out. It doesn't take 3 years to determine this patent infringement.

Re:So confused about who to root for...

[bdenton42]

The "main" requirement to be considered a patent troll is to file the case in East Texas.

Nokia filed the case in Delaware, so they must feel they have a pretty solid case here.

Re:Two way street

[Carewolf]

How's your full POSIX API handling e.g. non-blocking sockets, these days?

The same way they did in 80's and 90's: perfectly fine.

Re:Two way street

[KillerBob]

The Android reminds me a lot of using linux. One clicks and wonder if something is going to happen or not. Both the Blackberry and the iPhone give immediate feed back response.
Too often, going back to the home screen from an application leaves one staring at a black screen for too long ( 15-20 seconds).

Android *is* Linux... but your experiences with it do not gel with mine... perhaps it has more to do with what phone you've got than anything else... I have an HTC Dream (which I think is marketed as the G1 by T-Mobile). On mine, I find that it's very responsive, it opens applets quickly, and I never have to wait for simple tasks like reading my e-mail or surfing the web.

The thing of it is... according to the spec sheets, the HTC Dream and the HTC Magic have exactly the same memory, processor, and version of Android. They've got the same GPS, the same digital compass, the same everything... the only *real* difference between them (and the reason I got the Dream over the Magic) is that the Dream has a fold-out qwerty keyboard, while the Magic uses an on-screen keyboard.

Is it possible that yours is sluggish because there's a lot more applets running or something? I got rid of all the applets (including some of the more useful ones, like the wifi toggle, and silent mode toggle) in order to save battery life, but they also use up CPU time and if you have a bunch of stuff open it could seriously hinder the responsiveness of the platform. (on that note, download TasKiller from the app market, if you haven't already)

Re:What is this....

[Slash.Poop]

Not to keep this going all day but...my observation was quite simple.

1. This is like the 4th or 5th Apple patent infringement story lately. Which is true.
2. This is just another example that Apple is not the benevolent company that all the iPeople make it out to be. Which is true.

Re:What is this....

[intheshelter]

Corrections to your "observations"

1. It's the 4th or 5th ALLEGED infringement story.
2. This is NOT an example that Apple is not a benevolent company (the whole point of my original reply). I'm not arguing their innocence one way or the other, but to say that being sued for patent infringement is an example that Apple is not benevolent is ridiculous. Try to understand that a lawsuit has been filed, not a judgment rendered. Sometimes I wonder about the logic of you iHaters.

Re:Two way street

[Tran]

Well as a newbie to Android I can use all the pointers for better usage I can.

Interestingly enough when I first went onto the Market under 1.5 amongst the top 5 apps listed on the first screen where Appmanager (free) and TaskManager.
I took the hint and downloaded those 2 utilities first. Never needed something like that on the iphone. I did have something like that on Windows mobile.

But I took your advice and ran taskmanager and sure enough there where plenty off apps running. Not sure why most of those apps stay resident ( why would market or the browser of google maps stay active? It is not clear to me how to exit an application without it staying as an active task) But, only 5 apps are active now: gmail, home, phone, messaging, task manager ( However it does not seem to show the executing widgets ( wifi toggle, a calendar widget and of course the google search widget).

Usually apps open quickly enough, however when in gmail on selecting a particular item on the list result in a delaybefore the message is displayed.
In a side by side comparion on my touch and the android, the difference has been very noticeable.
But now that I have cleaned house, here is my reactivity test now:
Click on gmail. it opens up, presents a list of e-mails. click on a message - and... ok, the response time has noticeably improved. The lag between click and response has been reduced significantly.

But this also re-iterates the point of mainstream usage. Should I, as a user, really have to worry about these things? That used to be ( and I gather still is on occasion) the problem on the windows ce/mobile platform. The things used to all of a sudden run out of memory - they device would tell you so, then promptly lock up (and this was running nothing more than the standard apps with the device).

If the Android exhibits the same behavior it won't make any inroads in the market. Granted, the Linux underpinnings here will keep this from happening as severely, but it seems it could happen.

Well the other difference between the Dream and the Magic is that the Magic has the better battery out of the box :)... I have gotten used to an on-screen keyboard with the touch, so a physical keyboard is not as important to me ( it was to my wife, another reason she went with the Blackberry instead of the Android).

Re:Two way street

[KillerBob]

But this also re-iterates the point of mainstream usage. Should I, as a user, really have to worry about these things?

No, I agree with you there. You really shouldn't have to worry about it... I'm cautiously optimistic about some of the new Android phones, though. Yours and mine have a 528MHz processor and 192MB of RAM, and some of the new planned ones have a 1GHz processor and much more RAM. The problem is that mine and yours were the first and second Android phones to market, respectively.

I'm wondering which app you're using, though... TasKiller (that's the name of the app, it's free through the Android market) shows the widgets on my phone. As for why stuff like browser, and market stay open after you've closed them, I think it's so that they open up faster next time you use them. On a phone where memory's not an issue, that's fine, but I think that you're running into a situation where the phone is running out of RAM and swapping. In the server world, if you start swapping you've lost the game... I think the phone world isn't significantly different from that. :/

Re:What is this....

[Slash.Poop]

Ahh yes. But when you hear 1 thing you dismiss it. When you hear 2 things, you dismiss it. Unfortunately it is much more than that. I am just following the iPeoples lead. Just acting how they do towards Microsoft. They hate when people act like them. But that if off topic.

Want me to pull all the other articles not related to patents showing Apple being underhanded? That is rhetorical because I am going home and I am done with this. However, there are MANY articles that could be posted.

Nice arguing you though. Have a good weekend! :-)

Re:What is this....

[intheshelter]

As I mentioned before, I wasn't arguing Apples innocence or guilt in this or any other situation. Just making the point that this accusation by Nokia has no bearing on whether Apple is benevolent or not.

Re:Two way street

[kamochan]

I guess I did software development for some other Symbian, then, back in the '00s :)

Re:So confused about who to root for...

[JAlexoi]

Since apple licensed ARM design, something tells me that they are actually going to create that chip.

Re:So confused about who to root for...

[sbeckstead]

whoooosh

Re:So confused about who to root for...

[Sandbags]

Actually, they BOUGHT PMI Semi, and we know they're making their own processor engine, but that's still seperate from the 3G chipset...