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

[Anonymous Coward]

Whoever wins, we lose.

Get to da choppa!

Re:This is not going to end well

[palegray.net]

Your point is well made. Large companies like Apple, IBM, Microsoft, etc maintain huge patent portfolios and have extraordinarily complicated cross-licensing arrangements that would take an army of outside attorneys decades to fully decipher. It's largely a defensive measure; as you pointed out, poking at Apple with a stick is likely to result in Apple bludgeoning them with a log.

Re:This is not going to end well

[Penguuu]

They have actually already countersuited Nokia for earlier patent disputes: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2357039,00.asp

Re:This is not going to end well

[Anonymous Coward]

You are aware that Nokia has been around since the 19th century and have a much larger patent portfolio than Apple, right? Nokia's amount of R&D dwarfs the amount Apple does.

Re:This is not going to end well

[Midnight Thunder]

You are aware that Nokia has been around since the 19th century and have a much larger patent portfolio than Apple, right? Nokia's amount of R&D dwarfs the amount Apple does.

That might be the case, but only patents filed in the past 20 years are relevant (20 years being generally the longest period for a patent, in any country). For this reason what matters is not how much innovation a company had done since their existence, but how much it has been innovating and filing in the past 20 years.

Re:This is not going to end well

[Bigjeff5]

So you're saying it would be more like Nokia poking Apple with a stick, Apple getting out their Super Stick of Doom (patent pending), followed by Nokia crushing Apple with their Patent Log of All Things Terrible and Marvelous (patented)?

Re:This is not going to end well

[Itninja]

Whoever wins, we lose.

Dear Sir,

I am from 20th Century Fox Corporation and are hereby informing you that we own the rights to "Whoever wins, we lose". Please cease and desist use of that phrase immediately or face hilarious legal action.

Re:This is not going to end well

[Monkeedude1212]

Just FYI, never say "Something has been around since the 19th Century" - The difference between 1801 and 1899 is pretty huge, and it only leads to under or over estimation. Say 1860's next time.

And also, as a side note, their first electronic device was launched in the 1960's - so its not like their broad patent portfolio as a paper mill will really affect Apple too much.

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

[dunkelfalke]

Okay. How about that: Nokia made their first cell phone in 1982. Ten years later they made the world's first GSM phone.

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

[dontmakemethink]

However, looking really hard at TFA doesn't reveal anything. How could the author know Nokia claims "almost all" of Apple's products violate Nokia's patents without citing one single specific example? Pretty in-depth journalism there. Maybe they ran out of space on the internet? Everyone use SMS shortforms from now on...

Re:This is not going to end well

[Midnight Thunder]

You know GSM? Yeah, Nokia did most of the work there based on another standard they mostly developed with Ericsson, NMT. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia#Involvement_in_GSM As GSM was published in 1990, I suppose they may have a patent or ten in that area from the last 20 years.

Certainly, but these patents are surely part of the GSM license which Apple paid for from the GSM Association? It would seem really odd for Apple to pay a fortune for a license, that does not cover any of the required patents.

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

[Xest]

"Possible infringement by other parties has no relevance."

It certainly does, because if Apple does get them enforced in the court it means companies using them are a lot less safe. They're put into a situation where they can either spend the rest of their existence shitting themselves that Apple could pull the rug from under them at any moment or also themselves put forth pre-emptive court cases to try and force Apple to license the patents to them. Apple will find itself under a deluge of patent suits as everyone scrambles to force a cross-licensing agreement to protect themselves from patents which now have a legal precedent behind them.

As Apple isn't willing to cross-license with Nokia, do you really think they'll be willing to cross-license with anyone else?

Re:This is not going to end well

[dangitman]

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.

Re:This is not going to end well

[sznupi]

I would be very surprised if licensing deals with Sony Ericsson, Motorola, etc. don't include some amount of cross-licensing.

In which case demanding the same from Apple is exactly the Reasonable And Non-Discriminatory thing.

Re:This is not going to end well

[Xest]

That's certainly Apple's argument yes, but whether it has any validity is really down to the GSM Association and the courts to decide, the best anyone on Slashdot can do is merely speculate in this respect.

My point was more aimed in response to the idea that Apple will be able to defend itself with mere counter-suits. As stated in my original post above, I don't think they are well positioned to do so. The fact their current counter-suit is so weak in terms of the patents it uses is a pretty good example of why Apple doesn't seem in a good position to fight patent with patent in this particular case.

You cannot claim Apple's patents are far more valuable than the fee other handset manufacturers have paid because you do not know the terms of the deal Nokia has made with other manufacturers, nor do I believe the patents Nokia has requested to license from Apple have been published. It is rather dishonest to suggest this unless you are working at Nokia and know what their licensing terms with the 3rd parties are and know what they have requests from Apple? Is there really anything Apple could license to Nokia that is worth any more than the patents which Nokia is suing over which underly major essential components of Apple's flagship devices?

Re:This is not going to end well

[TubeSteak]

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.

And how does this excuse Apple's unlicensed usage of the patented technology?
If Nokia is being unfair, Apple should take it to Court (or to whatever industry body regulates these disputes) without violating Nokia's patents.

Re:This is not going to end well

[rsmith-mac]

It's possible (and even likely) that some of the others have done cross-licensing deals, but if everyone had done that, then there wouldn't be any phone manufacturers besides Sony Ericsson, Moto, and Nokia. Not everyone has valuable patents to cross-license; for example the army of dumbphone manufacturers in developing countries. If the only way to get Nokia's patents was to cross-license, they simply wouldn't exist.

There is a price at which Nokia will license their patents - however it looks like they aren't making it available to Apple.

Re:This is not going to end well

[lepidosteus]

You completly missed his point. He's not saying apple is violating patents related to GSM, he's saying that yes, nokia did a lot of patented R&D in the last two decades.

Re:This is not going to end well

[jpmorgan]

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.

Re:This is not going to end well

[mjwx]

That might be the case, but only patents filed in the past 20 years are relevant (20 years being generally the longest period for a patent, in any country).

Nokia is significantly bigger and richer then apple, roughly by about 4 times. The amount of patents Apple has matters little if 1. Apple is proven to be knowingly and wilfully infringing (not obscurely) or 2. Nokia can fight longer and harder then Apple (and Apple are not known for winning a lot of law suits).

So if no one is clearly right, he with the most money and lawyers wins, Nokia has expert legal teams in every major western nation, more capital and more liquid assets. Apple will not survive a true onslaught, so to use the GP's analogy, Apple may be able to swing a log but Nokia can drop an entire forest.

Re:This is not going to end well

[davester666]

Are you sure about this?

It's also been put forward that Nokia is not offering RAND terms to Apple, but rather requiring that Apple cross-license at least it's phone-related patents.

Re:This is not going to end well

[EvilIdler]

Nokia also made toilet paper. With that experience, they are ready for any coming shitstorm.

Re:This is not going to end well

[mjwx]

Apple has a market cap of 188B, 4 times that of Nokia, a P/E ratio about half that of Nokia, greater sales, profit--you pick a financial parameter, AAPL has substantially better numbers than Nokia. So, wtf is your point again?

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).

Re:This is not going to end well

[DMiax]

How do you know they did not ask the same to others? Magic eight-ball?

Re:This is not going to end well

[julesh]

That's certainly Apple's argument yes, but whether it has any validity is really down to the GSM Association and the courts to decide

It's really just down to the GSMA. Nokia's agreement to licence on RAND terms is with the GSMA; nobody else can enforce that agreement (due to a legal concept called privity of contract) so unless GSMA decide Nokia are in violation, nothing will come of it. I've heard nothing that suggests the GSMA are unhappy with Nokia.

Re:This is not going to end well

[Xest]

Infineon almost certainly does have a license, but that license won't cover Apple, only infineon's ability to produce the chips and sell them. The license has to be owned by whoever is making use of the patented technology, not just the company that initially makes use of it. It's not like transferable software licenses in this respect.

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.

Re:This is not going to end well

[tigga]

There are reasons Apple market capitalization is higher, for example those numbers -

Here from finance.yahoo.com :

AAPL

Profit Margin (ttm): 15.61%

NOK

Profit Margin (ttm): 1.25%

AAPL

Return on Assets (ttm): 10.25%

NOK

Return on Assets (ttm): 4.12%

AAPL

Return on Equity (ttm): 23.35%

NOK

Return on Equity (ttm): 4.04%

AAPL

Qtrly Revenue Growth (yoy): 25.00%

NOK

Qtrly Revenue Growth (yoy): -19.80%

Apple is fast growing company in crisis, Nokia, on the other hand is not growing (blame on crisis?). Pick your numbers ;)

Re:Consistency or hypocrisy?

[MightyMartian]

These appear to be patents against actual physical technologies, so it ain't the same thing as software patents. But please, do continue to show what a fucking retard you are.

Software patents

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:Consistency or hypocrisy?

[Waffle Iron]

or are they going to make excuses about how this is okay because it's going after Apple

It may not be ok, but it sure is ironic. So Ha Ha Ha Ha.

However what I just said is irrelevant. At the end of the day, these two companies will undoubtedly just do a broad ranging cross-licensing agreement like most big tech players. That will further serve to stifle any potential future competition from people who are not in the cabal of giants protected by their mutual patent moats.

Re:Consistency or hypocrisy?

[sjames]

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 :-)

Re:how the mighty have fallen

[EvilNTUser]

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?

Re:Consistency or hypocrisy?

[rkit]

Most probable scenario: cross license deal.

Re:Consistency or hypocrisy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Software engineering is done by writing code, and should be afforded protection under copyright laws, not patents.

A huge cornerstone of many open source licenses depend on their work being copyrightable, and not patentable.

Re:how the mighty have fallen

[DMiax]

Nokia has the largest market share, why do they have to catch up? The real thing is that Apple has to catch up and probably has used tecnology owned by Nokia illegally.

And at least on Slashdot we should value Nokia's hardware patents a little more than software patents. They spent real money on research. On the contrary, patenting "do something on user click" is not really that useful for the progress of human race...

Re:Link?

[Midnight Thunder]

I clicked the link and got six sentences. Is this what qualifies as slashdot newsworthy these days?

So you're the one reading the articles!

Re:Consistency or hypocrisy?

[Catiline]

Why is it ok to patent something physical, but not ok to patent software? I have never understood the distinction.

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.]

Sell your Nokia shares.

[jcr]

Litigation is a poor substitute for competition. Nokia's grasping at straws here, because they know that when the iPhone gets down around the $50 price point, they're toast.

-jcr

Re:Sell your Nokia shares.

[DMiax]

It's bound to happen, just after the macbook drops below 800$...

Re:Sell your Nokia shares.

[Bigjeff5]

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.

Re:Sell your Nokia shares.

[sznupi]

Actual stats are not much different. Nokia 39%, Samsung 17%, Sony Ericsson 9%, Motorola 8%, LG 8%. Apple hardly registers. At least they are visible in "smartphones"* (what, 15% of total market?) with 14% there...but where Nokia dominates even more, having 50%.

*explain to me why iPhone is called a smartphone while Sony Ericsson "feature phones" - not (they even have full multitasking). Or S40 Nokia phones for that matter (multitasking similar to iPhone, limited to audio player/phone features)

Re:Sell your Nokia shares.

[Bigjeff5]

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.

Re:Sell your Nokia shares.

[mdwh2]

The only Ipod at the low end is the Shuffle, which is a joke. No options other than random play, and only offering 1GB to say the Sandisk Sansa's 8GB (which also has an expandable microSD slot).

Re:Sell your Nokia shares.

[sznupi]

I can't believe this...don't you understand that you're looking from a point of view of a very atypical market? This is evidenced by you judging their UI by the current state of Symbian, for example...it's a drop in the bucket of what Nokia offers (and BTW considering that it's geared for cheap devices, with a UI continuity with S30/S40 and with a premiere a long time ago...it isn't doing so bad, with 50% of smartphone sales)

Customers want Nokia - because Nokia is still, as we speak, the most bought mobile phone brand in the world - that's just a simple fact that's not going away no matter what cognitive blindfold you are willing to wear.

Nokia does have user-friendly interface, at the least as far devices which are thought mostly as phones go. And they are improving Symbian, so when the world at large will be ready for smartphones (that includes really affordable handsets), Nokia might be too. They certainly were at each of previous major shifts in mobile phones.

You haven't dealt much with Nokia mobile phones (no, not your Symbian Nokia smartphone, it's not the mainstream class of devices I'm talking about) if you think you can get features I mentioned almost anywhere.

Lasty...that's a very curious definition of failure, having 50% of the smartphone market. I want to have such failures all my life!

Re:Mutually assured destruction...

[Bigjeff5]

I imagine a patent battle playing out like one of those weird anime card battles:

Apple: I summon... Multitouchscreen patent level three!
Multitouchscreen patent level three does 50 damage!

Nokia: I summon... Wirelessaudiotransmitionoverradio patent level five!
Wirelessaudotransmitionoverradio patent level five does 120 damage!

I mean I don't know what the actual patents are, but that seems to be the way it works.

Re:Consistency or hypocrisy?

[Anonymous Coward]

These are not physical as you can kick them. They are physical as Nokia in Nokia has actual product using them. Nokia has actually developed heaps of technology because they were very early to market (GSM, UMTS, etc were to a large extent developed by Nokia and Ericsson), so the patents cover a lot of actual technology that's widely used.

Nokia spent heaps of money developing many of the technologies that make cell-phones work, and the rest of the industry has to pay to make of for the R&D. That way everybody gets better products; Nokia has an incentive to do the R&D because they can make back the money and the rest because they can purchase the technology cheaper.

This is an excellent example of why the patent system was developed; everybody benefits by allowing Nokia patents on their technologies.

As for Apple... Multi-touch... Well, I've worked with that for almost a decade now...

Re:how the mighty have fallen

[Bigjeff5]

Indeed, the only catagory Apple wins with in smart-phones is in the single-device category, and the blackberry 8300 series (5 devices that are essentially the same phone in different configurations) is just a hair behind the iPhone 3g. RIM has over 40% of the smartphone market, a number Apple can't touch.

Nokia does ok in the smartphone market, but their bread and butter is the general handset market, of which they control more than half of the entire market.

Apple is not the big guy in this battle, Nokia is. Apple has, what, four variations of the same phone? Nokia has thousands. They have been in the business long enough that they may well have a case against Apple computers as well, since a phone is really nothing more than a small computer anyway.

Lawsuits

[countertrolling]

Kind of a neat way to maintain high public exposure, but can it be cheaper than regular advertising? Aside from the freebie here on the front page? Only their accountants know for sure.. I gotta admit.. the drama angle plays pretty good.. cliffhangers and everything.

Re:Consistency or hypocrisy?

[GasparGMSwordsman]

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

Re:Consistency or hypocrisy?

[Omnifarious]

So why does the medium of the patent actually matter?

This is an interesting question, and my take on it is this...

The malleability of the medium has a whole lot to say about the economic cost the patent system imposes on works created in the medium.

As our tools for manipulating the physical world in an automated fashion become more precise, cheaper and more flexible the physical world is going to start having the same kinds of problems with the patent system imposing an unacceptable burden that it currently has with software.

Re:Consistency or hypocrisy?

[hairyfeet]

Won't happen, and here is why: It is not in their best interests to risk losing the power that having patent warchests give them against new players attempting to enter the market. So instead what will happen is that after much saber rattling the lawyers from Nokia and Apple will get together and sign a cross licensing agreement covering any and all of the above patents, thus allowing both to keep their patent warchests while Nokia will get a nice check.

Just look at deals between AMD and Intel, ATI and Nvidia, for examples. While we can be sure that with patent warchests as large as the mega companies have that they are no doubt infringing on each others patents in probably hundreds of cases, by signing large CYA cross licensing agreements with each other they can continue business as usual and help to keep out new players. Just as I'm sure that along with that fat 1.25 billion dollar check Intel cut AMD to drop the anti-trust lawsuit there was wording in the settlement that lets AMD not worry about infringing on plenty of Intel patents. It is just the way the big corps roll sadly.

Re:Nope!

[93 Escort Wagon]

If he lost that, he'd clearly be in the running for the peace prize. Even if he did nothing for it.

Thank heavens the Nobel Peace Prize committee is above that sort of silly, mindless motivation!

Re:Nokia and the hurt bag...

[Bigjeff5]

I'd be very surprised if Apple were the big dog in this fight, given that Nokia has been designing and manufacturing cell phones for decades (verses just a couple years for Apple), has a very large patent portfolio in the cell phone realm on such trivial technologies as GSM and the like, and has almost 500 times the cell phone market share that Apple has.

Seriously, Nokia is not just a behemoth in the cell phone realm, it is THE behemoth. Sony-Ericsson, the next largest cell phone manufacturer, has less than 1/3 Nokia's market share.

Also, patent trolling is buying up patents and springing lawsuits on companies when one of them gains sufficient momentum. That is not what Nokia did. Nokia does original research and developement in cell phone technology, it's why they are the largest cell phone manufacturer in the world. Nokia offered licensing terms and Apple didn't like them. Just because Apple doesn't like the terms does not mean they get to ignore the patents. Apples only legal options were to accept the terms or not use the infringing technology, they did neither and now they have been sued.

Re:Consistency or hypocrisy?

[googlesmith123]

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

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:Wrong! Nokia wanted to extort Apple.

[sznupi]

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.

Re:Wrong! Nokia wanted to extort Apple.

[Xest]

This is merely Apple's argument, not fact.

Whether the argument is valid is down to the courts, and the GSM association to decide. Even then you may note that in those very quotes Apple themselves note that they were offered a different, much lower figure originally but still refused it citing it was excessive.

So the question for the courts/GSM association is, were the rates every really excessive, or is that just a convenient excuse that Apple has been using to try and actually pay an unreasonably low fee?

Re:Wrong! Nokia wanted to extort Apple.

[NimbleSquirrel]

The question is did Apple seek to license the patents before the iPhone was released?

Given that every other manufacturer has licensed these patents (and that they are in respect to a Standard) means that Apple would have known about them when it was developing the iPhone. Did Apple approach Nokia at any stage in the process or did Apple just forge ahead, knowing of a potential infringement, hoping to deal with it at a later point in time? Given Apple's secrecy of projects in development, it wouldn't surprise me if that was one of the main reasons they didn't sort out licensing ahead of time.

Did Apple know about the patents while the iPhone was in development? Did Apple approach Nokia in any way prior to the iPhone's release? Did Apple release the iPhone knowing that it was infringing on on or more of Nokia's patents? If the answer is yes, then arguements over F/RAND terms are rather moot.

Apple's countersuit is a bargaining tactic - an attempt to force Nokia to settle. The most recent filing by Nokia seems to indicate that they are not willing to settle (at least not yet, and any settlement will be under their terms), and that they think they have a good chance. Time will tell, but this is shaping up to be a very interesting case.

Re:Wrong! Nokia wanted to extort Apple.

[beelsebob]

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.
No, every other notable phone tech manufacturer cross licenses *standards essential* patents with Nokia and pays the same rate.

Nokia wanted apple to pay not only 3 times more, but also license patents that had *nothing* to do with standards.

Re:Wrong! Nokia wanted to extort Apple.

[beelsebob]

No, they don't, what's your point?

Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

So Nokia owned patents for annoying advertisements and cornering the smug douchebag market?

Re:Consistency or hypocrisy?

[McGiraf]

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.

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:Nokia and the hurt bag...

[Fahrvergnuugen]

I guess it depends on how you define "big dog". Apple's market cap is 188 Billion vs Nokia's 47 Billion.

Re:how the mighty have fallen

[vakuona]

It can multitask. It does that very well. Apple doesn't allow other apps to multitask, and purposely didn't create a way for other apps to because it saves battery, and it prevents apps from taking over the phone.

Re:Consistency or hypocrisy?

[profplump]

You've long been able to patent processes and not just specific implementations of a process, at least in the US (and possibly other places, I haven't done the research to know). And by "long" I mean "more than a century" -- there was a USSC case involving a process for refining flour that addressed just this distinction (Cochane v. Deemer, 1877). The majority opinion there says "A process may be patentable, irrespective of the particular form of the instrumentality used.”

So what I want to know is why processes implemented in software are different than processes implement in other hardware, bearing in mind that the later have been eligible for patents for at least 132 years. Or if software and hardware implementations of processes aren't different, what in society has changed to that would make us want to overturn our traditional patent rules.

Re:Consistency or hypocrisy?

[v1]

Why is it ok to patent something physical, but not ok to patent software? I have never understood the distinction.

It's a lot easier to patent a specific method or physical design than it is to patent a program. The difficulty is where do you draw the line? Like patenting a song... what if I change a single note, does your patent apply? It's trivial for someone to take a chunk of code and make periodic, trivial changes, such a swapping order of adjacent instructions, and make it physically very different without changing it at all, and that clearly would allow someone to violate your IP if that's all it took.

So having a way to make clear rules is a big factor. For instance, in music it can get down to counting the number of identical notes in a row.

Programming also has other issues that are unique. Given the restrictions of a language, the simpler a task, the fewer ways there are available to you to perform the task. Opportunities for diversity grow rapidly as the code gets more complex, but at the same time those that want to patent their code then tend to want more general interpretation because it becomes increasingly easy to make minor changes to their work and now call it your own. Very basic and very well-known tasks have a single known most-efficient method to code them - such as a bubble sort in C, that any skilled programmer could develop independently. Those must fall into the area of "obvious", which is not patentable.

Re:Consistency or hypocrisy?

[Zordak]

Software patents are more like patenting the idea of a mouse trap rather than a specific apparatus for trapping mouses.

No, both of those are legitimate subject matter for a patent. If you are the first person ever to conceive of the idea of building a trap to catch mice, then you can get a broad patent on mouse traps. If mouse traps are already in the prior art, you can get a patent on your improved mouse trap. Copyright would apply to a diagram or schematic of your mouse trap. A copyright on your schematic would not prevent me from building the trap described by the schematic. It just keeps me from copying the schematic itself. But a patent on your design does keep me from making your mouse trap, regardless of whether or not I actually copy the schematic. Extrapolating out to software is not difficult and is left as an exercise for the reader.

Re:Consistency or hypocrisy?

[Artifakt]

I think you're failing to see how the steps in the process differ from physical invention: It's not that software is implemented based on predefined components, it's a question of where creativity is possible in the process (I'm using creativity in a broad sense, to include the word invention itself, and words such as 'originality' and even 'non-obviousness' when they are used to describe the patent process. I'll try to use some of those more specific terms to make this a little clearer).

As post #30588846 put it, the assembly of code is done in preconcieved ways. Someone already built a hardware framework that controls what you can create in software for a given purpose at one set of levels (essentially the bottommost levels - you can't, for example, make a deliberate spelling mistake to make a pun or coin a new word to create something novel and previously unforseen, as the system treats these as mistakes which won't execute). There are many non-obvious but still useful ways to arrange a very complex set of logic gates to make a processor, ergo that is patentable (or some parts of it are). There are no similarly non-obvious ways to arrange assembly language commands - A C, L, or ST, or even an SSCH does what it does, and its permissible uses are all documented. When you program above machine and assembly languages, you can't rearrange these to your own taste, as you can't even normally see them.
        At the next set of levels, someone has created a programming language you are using. Unlike a natural language, it too is a very rigidly defined framework. Some choices may seem to be available, but there is often a precise ranking possible, in that one algorythm may be clearly superior to all others for the purpose. Doing something deliberately different is mostly also doing something deliberately inefficient, against standard, or just plain wrong. At neither of these two sets of levels can you actually do much if anything significantly creative. You also can't protect that level by patent because the legal system already forbids protecting the mathematics on which your work is based, and your implementation is a derivitive work of the sphere of math, so it can't have rights the math itself doesn't have.
      Above that second set of levels, yes programming can be creative. But there, you're describing something similar to writing in a natural language. It's normally already protectable by copyright and so shouldn't gain simultanious protection from patent law. Some choices here are non-obvious, but non-obvious in more like the same way as choosing to use adjectives more sparingly and make the red-headed character be from out of state, not so much non-obvious in the 'tungsten makes a durable filament' manner.
        I'm not saying I actually agree with all this, mind you. I think one of the points of both open ended scripting languages and of OOP is to make genuine creative choice available at deeper levels of the process. But, the court system is thinking of programming mostly as it was 20 or more years ago.
 

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.

Will be interesting to follow.

[miffo.swe]

Most of the Nokia patents are old, non-obvious and already established. Its not like patents on "doing thing x, but this time on the internet!". Why Apple decided to spit in Nokias face i dont really understand. They cant win this one, especially since the US is trying to get software patents acknowledged in the EU. Now is really not the time to play the protectionist game so i dont think political pressure will be put into the courts.

Re:What this is really about

[RedWizzard]

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.

My understanding is that Nokia agreed to license those patents under FRAND terms to anyone implementing the GSM standard as a condition of having those technologies as part of the standard. If so then they don't have right to ask for whatever they like now.

Nokia was very nice about this deal.

[Weezul]

Nokia offered Apple a cross licensing deal beneficial to both companies. Apple refused, indicating their intent to use their interface patents against other mobile phone makers.

I've no idea what FRAND obligations Nokia faces under their original GSM Association membership, but Apple cannot pursue those obligations in court, as Apple is not the GSM Association.

Would some GSM Association member pursue those obligations in court on Apple's behalf? Doubtful, given Apple's indications that they'll sue other mobile makers once the GSM patents are off the table.

Apple's best option is simply agreeing to Nokia's original cross licensing deal.

p.s. It's very likely that Nokia merely asked for the cross licensing scheme built into the FRAND obligations of GSM Association membership, meaning even if Apple paid another GSM Association member to sue Nokia, they might still lose.

Tlbhtlbhltt

[garote]

Well, there you go. As you say, you have no idea what FRAND obligations Nokia faces. So I will describe them to you.

In 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. That demand is prima-facie discriminatory. Nokia is not allowed to troll through the entire portfolio of a company when assembling the terms of a license. That behavior is practically the opposite of what the GSM Association was assembled to do.

Then in 2009, Nokia actually worsened their terms, by demanding a royalty three times greater than any other they'd offered in the past.

Your ignorance invalidates the rest of your "argument", including your bizarre condition that only the GSM Association itself can file a patent lawsuit against its members.