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Nokia Claims Patent Violations in Most Apple Products
An anonymous reader writes with an extract from this Associated Press story, as carried by The Globe and Mail: "Nokia is broadening its legal fight with Apple, saying almost all of the company's products violate its patents, not just the iPhone. Nokia Corp. said Tuesday that it has filed a complaint against Apple Inc. with the US International Trade Commission. The Finnish phone maker says Apple's iPhone, iPods and computers all violate its intellectual property rights."
They have actually already countersuited Nokia for earlier patent disputes: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2357039,00.asp
The problem in the world today is communication. Too much communication - Homer Simpson
One of the patents that Apple is countersuing on is this one:
No. 6,239,795 B1: Pattern and color abstraction in a graphical user interface
Sounds to me like rabid software patenting.
Source- http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2009/12/apple_nokia_sto.html
The two are not necessarily exclusive. If you hate patents, having the big patent supporters beat each other to death with them is a decent step to getting rid of them. The best possible outcome would be a multiple hundred billion volley of lawsuits between all of the biggies until they bring each other to their knees. If they die, we win. If they wise up and back away from supporting patents, we win. If they clog the courts so full that they can't function, we win. Triple bonus points if they all decide the real problem is the USPTO and they sue it to death.
New meme, trademark confusion. Be sure to prominently mix and match trademarks when talking to various companies. Perhaps we can get a corporate world war started :-)
Judging by market share, Nokia is number one with Symbian. Judging by operating system technology, Nokia is number one with Maemo. Who exactly do they need to catch up with and how?
My Sig: SEGV
Well, at least in the USA, if the "thing" being patented is something a human being could do (with an extreme surplus of time and infinite paper and pencils) then it is an abstract idea and explicitly excluded from protection. This is why, for instance, you can't patent raw mathematics like calculus.
And specifically, because computers see all software as "raw mathematics" at the hardware level, software should be excluded from patenst. [Or put another way: human beings are a 1 centi-hertz CPU, and US legal precedent excludes any activity they perform unaided from patenting.]
Do you like Japanese imports?
Okay. How about that: Nokia made their first cell phone in 1982. Ten years later they made the world's first GSM phone.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
I correct myself. The following is a list of patents Nokia claims Apple infringed upon:
* No. 5, 634, 074 : Serial I/O device identifies itself to a computer through a serial interface during power on reset then it is being configured by the computer
* No. 6, 343, 263 B1 : Real-time signal processing system for serially transmitted data
* No. 5,915,131 : Method and apparatus for handling I/O requests utilizing separate programming interfaces to access separate I/O services
* No. 5,555,369: Method of creating packages for a pointer-based computer system
* No. 6,239,795 B1: Pattern and color abstraction in a graphical user interface
* No. 5,315,703: Object-oriented notification framework system
* No. 6,189,034 B1: Method and apparatus for dynamic launching of a teleconferencing application upon receipt of a call
* No. 7,469,381, B2: List scrolling and document translation, scaling, and rotation on a touch-screen display
* No.RE 39, 486 E: Extensible, replaceable network component system
* No. 5,455,854: Object-oriented telephony system
* No. 7,383,453 B2: Conserving power by reducing voltage supplied to an instruction-processing portion of a processor
* No. 5,848,105: GMSK signal processors for improved communications capacity and quality
* No. 5, 379,431: Boot framework architecture for dynamic staged initial program load
I thought those were the patents that Apple held. So these are the ones Apple is claiming Nokia infrienged. Source: http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/09/12/11/apple_files_countersuit_against_nokia.html
Say NO to unpaid Internships!
The question is, is Apple's patent portfolio that usable against Nokia really enforceable? Nokia's clearly is hence why every other manufacturer has been licensing them without hassle.
This argument makes no sense. The fact that others are licensing Nokia's patents is not proof that Nokia's patents are valid or enforceable. Invalid and unenforceable patents get licensed all the time, just to save legal hassles, or because of ignorance. Try using logic next time.
... and then they built the supercollider.
No, copyrights will not prevent you of implementing similar thing from scratch, patents can prevent you from doing anything similar.
Software patents are more like patenting the idea of a mouse trap rather than a specific apparatus for trapping mouses.
Nokia wanted to charge Apple 3x times more only after Apple refused cross-licensing. And cross-licensing is what surely any other notable phone tech manufacturer does with Nokia.
Seems Apple is just convinced it should be the only one getting better treatment than "fair/reasonable and non-discriminatory" (as agreed by this industry). I say send the spoiled kid to his room first.
One that hath name thou can not otter
I never said they were, and that point is pretty much irrelevant to the patent war going on between the two.
However, since you brought it up, Nokia has a little over 40% of the worldwide smartphone market, RIM has not quite 20%, and Apple has a little over 10% of the market. Nokia has been losing ground in smartphones, but they are still the behemoth, and Apple in particular hasn't been hurting them nearly as bad as RIM has (19.5% up from 10.9% last year).
The smartphone accounts for about 12% (and slowly rising) of the overall cell phone market, of which Nokia has been and continues to dominate.
My point was that Nokia is the big boy in this fight, not Apple, and it's true no matter what statistics you may wish to cherry-pick.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
The iPod line is one of the most expensive music players on the market, have you actually looked? Its big selling points are the easy interface and iTunes, definitely not price. Go to walmart and have a looksee for yourself. You'll find a half dozen players for much cheaper than the equivalent iPod.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
Yes, the patents for GSM are offered under RAND terms. i.e., a nominal (but not trivial) amount of money.
The lawsuit comes from the fact that Apple decided it was special and, unlikely everybody else, didn't have to pay.
Apple's market cap is not their actual assets nor capital, market capitalisation is how much the market perceives a company is worth based on it's stock price. Market Cap is built upon the almighty Imaginary Dollar (!$) which is responsible for the current economic crisis. The Imaginary Dollars come from Apple's stock price if they start borrowing based on the amount of money they potentially have rather then the amount of money they actually have the same thing that happened to the US economy will happen to Apple.
Nokia has buildings, fabrication plants, subsidiaries, real assets. Apple has Stock. So Nokia has more actual assets to back up their fight with. Market Capitalisation is entirely based on share price so this has little bearing on their actual ability to raise capital, I.E. market cap is not very good collateral against a loan where as actual assets are.
In addition to this, Nokia already has the experience and expertise.
Market cap doe not mean anything (as a point of trivia, Nokia's market capitalisation accounts for 1/3 of the Helsinki Stock exchange) but lets look at revenue shall we.
Nokia: E50.72 Bn (US$72.6)
Apple: US$32.48 Bn
Net Income
Nokia: E3.98 Bn (US$5.71)
Apple: US$4.83 Bn
Total Assets
Nokia: E39.58 Bn (US$56.77)
Apple: US$39.57 Bn
Total Equity
Nokia: E16.51 Bn (US$23.68)
Apple: US$21.03
So Nokia has a significant advantage in all by equity (which controls the amount they can borrow on its debts for existing assets) where Nokia only has a slight advantage. Nokia can borrow a lot more then Apple seeing as it can back up its debts with real assets rather then IP (which isn't worth anything as collateral).
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.