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

[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

[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

[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.

Not for long !

[Pieroxy]

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

Canned answer

[betterunixthanunix]

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

Re:Canned answer

[Monkeedude1212]

Yahoo's Answer: Lap Dances

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?

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...

[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.

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

[AlXtreme]

Popularity != Quality

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: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

[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

[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: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: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. :)

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 !!

[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: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?

how dare they are

[donguz]

Steve Jobs is the one who invented cell phones,

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: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.

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.

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

[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: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.