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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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.

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?

[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?

[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: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.]

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.

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?

Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

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

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.