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."

Comments

This is not going to end well

[richardkelleher]

Apple has been patenting things for a long time. If they look really hard, I suspect they will find hundreds of patents that Nokia is using without compensation.

Re:This is not going to end well

[Xest]

The issue Apple faces is that the patents Nokia were originally pursuing were patents that every single other mobile manufacturer was happy to license.

This suggests that Nokia actually has a strong case and there's clearly a good reason for Nokia doing this whilst not needing to go after other phone manufacturers. Despite all the iHype each iteration of the iPhone has still only sold around 10mill to 15mill handsets which is pretty much par for the course for high end phones like this, although Apple likes to group the separate handsets together into "the iPhone" and suggest sales of 40mill whilst separating it's opponents iterations (for example the N95, N96 iterations) to show itself as more of a success story than the figures really put it at.

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. Nokia no doubt looked into this point long before they started the patent action against Apple and clearly seem to believe they have a case. What's more, as Apple isn't playing nicely with the entire rest of the cell phone market Apple may find it's not just Nokia it's up against but the likes of Sony Ericsson, Motorola and so forth also. If Apple starts digging into it's patent portfolio to use against Nokia it will be a cause for concern for other companies that could potentially infringe these patents and Apple may find itself up against all these companies also. Again, this is not a problem in Nokia's case, because everyone who could be threatened by Nokia's patents is already licensing them. The only chance Apple has in fighting this with counter-cases is if it can find patents that everyone but Nokia licenses from them, but as Apple's counter-patents so far have been extremely minor it seems highly unlikely Apple has any real threatening usable patents to counter-sue with without bringing to bear on it the cross hairs of perhaps not just the rest of the mobile phone industry who would also be at threat, but from large segments of the IT industry including other giants such as IBM and Microsoft.

I applaud what Apple has done to the cell phone market in giving it a much needed wake up call and taking mobile phones forward, but that doesn't give it some right to break all the rules of the phone market. Really, the sensible solution for Apple would be to just license the patents like every other cell phone manufacturer does rather than continuing to pretend it's special. It can't on one hand complain that Nokia wishes to be able to use some of their technology as part of the license agreement and suggest that as such Nokia is showing a lack of innovation all the while whilst doing exactly that themselves by using Nokia's technology without license.

Re:This is not going to end well

[rsmith-mac]

Bear in mind why Apple hasn't licensed these patents yet. If their side of the story (and their counter-suits) are to be believed, then it's because Nokia won't license them under Reasonable And Non-Discriminatory (RAND) terms.

All indications that Apple wants to pay the same licensing fee that Sony, Motorola, etc have paid. Nokia on the other hand doesn't want the fee - they want to cross-license Apple's patents - which are far more valuable than any fee that other handset manufacturers have paid. Nokia is violating RAND by refusing to license the necessary patents to Apple as they have the other handset manufacturers. Under RAND terms, Apple is under no obligation to cross-license to get access to Nokia's patents, although they still have the option of doing so if they'd like (and here's a hint, they don't want to).

For that reason, even if Nokia has a stronger patent portfolio, it's anyone's guess how this will finally go. The larger GSM Association requires that all of this stuff be offered under RAND terms, so there may be consequences for Nokia if they keep this up.

Re:This is not going to end well

[nneonneo]

Nokia demanded that Apple cross-license several of its patents in return for licensing the key GSM patents, something it has not asked other manufacturers to do. Nokia therefore singled out Apple for licensing terms despite promising the GSM Alliance that it would license these patents under fair and non-discriminatory terms; singling out Apple and trying to force a cross-licensing deal is not non-discriminatory.

Re:This is not going to end well

[Weezul]

Nokia's first offer was a cross licensing deal. Apple refused! So now every GSM Association member thinks "Apple will sue us over their shitty interface patents." Oops!

I expect the GSM Association will ignore Nokia's FRAND obligations with respect to Apple, thanks to Apple's behavior here.

Apple has been acting like a spoiled little child ever since they entered the phone market. I'm sure the big players will happily flush them down the toilet.

Wrong! Nokia wanted to extort Apple.

[motorcyclemaintain]

The issue Apple faces is that the patents Nokia were originally pursuing were patents that every single other mobile manufacturer was happy to license.

Actually no. Nokia wanted Apple to give them much more than "every other single" manufacturer. Nokia wanted to charge Apple 3x the fair and reasonable rate they charged others. They also wanted free access to Apple tech. Here are just a few of Apple's complaints:

Article 81. In Particular, in or about the spring of 2008, Nokia demanded that, as part of it’s compensation for licensing Nokia’s portfolio of purported essential patents, Apple must grant Nokia a license to a particular number of Apple non-standards-essential patents...Apple immediately rejected the proposal and reiterated Apple’s position that Nokia’s F/RAND obligations required it to licence Nokia’s purportedly essential technologies.

Article 82. ...In or about May 2009, Nokia demanded a royalty approximately three times as much as the royalty proposed the prior spring, which was itself in excess of a F/RAND rate, as well as “picks’ to Apple’s non-standards-essential patents.

Naughty Nokia. Go to your room.

Re:What this is really about

[Bigjeff5]

Apple is not a GSM Association member. They had nothing to do with developing GSM, and so don't have claim to the favorable RAND terms available to GSM Association members.

If Nokia wanted more in exchange for the use of their patents than other GSM patent holders do, then that is their right. If Apple doesn't want to pay Nokia's terms, they need to find a way around the patents. If that's what they did, then Apple will win. If they didn't, well, you don't get to just say "Your patent isn't important" and ignore it.

Claiming that other Apple products violate their patents is just more posturing to try and force a settlement on terms that are very unfavorable to Apple.

That's assuming Apple products don't violate Nokia patents. If they do violate the patents, then Nokia's position is completely legitimate, and Apple refused to license Nokia's patents and went ahead and infringed them.

Re:Apple Copied LG for Iphone G1

[Anonymusing]

That's why it was so amusing to see Apple copying the LG's Prada phone design for the Iphone.

FWIW, the Prada was announced December 2006, one month before the iPhone. They had both clearly been in development for awhile -- Wikipedia says the iPhone was in development for at least 2.5 years, though no word on the Prada's development time. Hard to imagine that your assertion is true.