Slashdot Mirror
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."
Why are standards based on patented technology?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Once the iPhones will have all flown away, Nokia will be left with noone to sue !!!
Write boring code, not shiny code!
I sure hope its someone who makes specific, actionable claims instead of this kind of general accusation. I.e., not you.
Canned answer: "How else will we encourage innovation?!"
Palm trees and 8
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.
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.
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?
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
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.
--
make install -not war
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.
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?
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.
Liberal? Conservative? Compare perspectives at Left-Right
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.
Would you just do a spinoff site calls "SueDot" already?
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/
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.
"Growing old is inevitable; growing up is optional."
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?
Popularity != Quality
This sig is intentionally left blank
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]
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.
My Sig: SEGV
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
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.
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.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
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.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
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.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
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. :)
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.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Yeah I don't think cockroaches have anything on humans and there are way more cockroaches than humans.
Why bother
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.
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?
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.
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.
--
make install -not war
Steve Jobs is the one who invented cell phones,
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.
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.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
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.
If you believe everything you read, you'd better not read. - Japanese proverb
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.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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).
There is no contest in life for which the unprepared have the advantage.
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.
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.
Getting sued for patent infringement?... There's an app for that!
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.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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.
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.
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.