Apple Seeks To Ban Nokia Imports To US

Hugh Pickens writes "Cnet reports that the ongoing patent battle between Apple and Nokia has escalated, with Apple moving to block imports of Nokia cell phones to the US by filing a complaint with the International Trade Commission, an independent federal agency that examines issues including unfair trade practices involving patent, trademark, and copyright infringement. In December, Nokia filed its own complaint with the USITC alleging that Apple infringes seven Nokia patents 'in virtually all of its mobile phones, portable music players, and computers' and sought to ban imports of Apple's iPhone, iPod, and MacBook products. Responding to Apple's latest move, Nokia spokesman Mark Durrant told Bloomberg that 'Nokia will study the complaint when it is received and continue to defend itself vigorously. However this does not alter the fact that Apple has failed to agree appropriate terms for using Nokia technology and has been seeking a free ride on Nokia's innovation since it shipped the first iPhone in 2007.' An ITC investigation is a lengthy process, but it's possible that Apple and Nokia might reach some sort of settlement as suits continue to escalate between the two companies."

Comments

Sue first, ask questions later

[Amorymeltzer]

Is it really cheaper to sue for peace? I mean, can't the legal teams for both companies see this down the road and come to some sort of mutual agreement in advance? It'd sure save a lot of time and money, not to mentioning freeing the courts a bit. Why is it acceptable policy to sue instead of discussing?

Re:Sue first, ask questions later

[Anonymous Coward]

Lawyers need to get paid, and this is the process by which they are paid.

Re:Sue first, ask questions later

[Hamster Of Death]

What colour is the sky in your fantasy world?

Re:Sue first, ask questions later

[sycodon]

They need to just fucking cross license the patents like they always end up doing. Stop feeding the animals (Lawyers).

Re:Sue first, ask questions later

[Hungus]

They have been "discussing" this for some time now, if you had not noticed.

Further, Apple and Nokia are not tying up normal or federal courts with this issue: The filings are with the ITC (International Trade Commission).

The mission of the Commission is to (1) administer U.S. trade remedy laws within its mandate in a fair and objective manner; (2) provide the President, USTR, and Congress with independent analysis, information, and support on matters of tariffs, international trade, and U.S. competitiveness; and (3) maintain the Harmonized Tariff Schedule of the United States (HTS).

Re:Sue first, ask questions later

[Anonymous Coward]

Blue, why do you ask?

Re:Sue first, ask questions later

[MichaelSmith]

There was this guy 2000 years ago who got nailed to a tree for saying stuff like that.

Re:Sue first, ask questions later

[the_humeister]

Won't someone please think of the lawyers?

Re:Sue first, ask questions later

[mjwx]

Is it really cheaper to sue for peace? I mean, can't the legal teams for both companies see this down the road and come to some sort of mutual agreement in advance?

Do you not think Nokia has been negotiating with Apple from the moment they released the iphone (3 years), they finally got sick of the delay tactics and went to the courts. This is a bit of tit for tat on Apple's part.

Re:Sue first, ask questions later

[Kitkoan]

They have been thinking of the lawyers, who else do you think about when your suing someone? (aside from your legal victim)

Re:Sue first, ask questions later

[neoform]

Hahahahahahahah.. wait, you think the lawyers are going to seek what's best for their clients instead of what good for them? As a lawyer, you want your clients to charge into battle and sue as much as possible.. that way the lawyers get paid a lot more. If they settle quickly and avoid litigiousness... the lawyers get paid way less, so instead they promise victory and glory.. at $5000/hr.

Re:Sue first, ask questions later

[sopssa]

They need to just fucking cross license the patents like they always end up doing. Stop feeding the animals (Lawyers).

That is exactly what Nokia has been trying to do, but Apple doesn't agree to the terms (which are same for every other manufacturer too). And since Apple is infringing patents and doesn't agree to the standard cross licensing, they can't do other than sue.

Re:Sue first, ask questions later

[Anonymous Coward]

It doesn't matter, lawyers want legal fees, a "peaceful" resolution will never be in the lawyer's best interest. At least this way, it allows the option to fight it out in court where the real $$$ are.

Re:Sue first, ask questions later

[flyingfsck]

Lawyers want to make money, not save money...

Re:Sue first, ask questions later

[dangitman]

And since Apple is infringing patents and doesn't agree to the standard cross licensing,

What's your evidence of this? Nokia alleges that its patents are being infringed, but that doesn't mean it's true. Same in reverse. Does the fact that Apple has alleged that Nokia is infringing its patents mean it is true?

Re:Sue first, ask questions later

[someone1234]

That's what the case will decide?

Re:Sue first, ask questions later

[ultranova]

Given the amount of patents granted nowadays and their scope, I think it's almost certain that any product infringes on at least some of them, the only question being which ones specifically. This rises some interesting questions about the viability of the patent system itself, as we approach singularity and technological progress goes ever faster.

Re:Sue first, ask questions later

[Serious Callers Only]

That is exactly what Nokia has been trying to do, but Apple doesn't agree to the terms

That is exactly what Apple has been trying to do, but Nokia doesn't agree to the terms.

Disagreement works both ways, unless you believe a priori that one side is right, and we're not going to be able to tell from some news story (on Slashdot, no less!) whether the many patents in question are valid. Good excuse for a flamefest though.

Re:Sue first, ask questions later

[V!NCENT]

Nokia shareholder, much? ;)

Re:Sue first, ask questions later

[V!NCENT]

Dude, you missing the point....

You have this very large mobile phone market. A lot of companies are in it. It's a closed knit group where everybody tries to collectively protect their common business. Everybody has patents and everybody is sharing them. Simple.

Then Apple joins in... They think that they are somehow more important than everybody else. They say "fsck your patents cross-licesensing! We are going to take over this little market of all of you!".

This is not nice. I don't care who's violating who's patents... Nokia just needs to win this. Period.

Re:Sue first, ask questions later

[obarthelemy]

Other companies didn't seem to have issues with Nokia's terms, though ?

Re:Sue first, ask questions later

[Anonymous Coward]

At the end of the day, we use lawyers whenever there is conflict in order to resolve conflict without resorting to bashing each other over the head with clubs and large rocks.

For this reason, we always associate lawyers with conflict and unpleasantness. Perhaps this closeness to conflict does bring out the worst in the lawyers themselves.

But it can also bring out the best in people: Think of some of the great lawyers e.g. Mahatma Ghandi or Nelson Mandela.

Or would you rather see this conflict solved gladiatorially between Steve Jobs and Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo? In that case, twenty quatludes on the tallest one...

Re:Sue first, ask questions later

[reboot246]

Lawyers want power. Money is just a means to that end.
The worst situation happens when they get elected.

Re:Sue first, ask questions later

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Other companies didn't seem to have issues with Nokia's terms, though ?

Ignorant question: Are the companies that agreed bigger than Nokia and have a sizable marketshare to protect? I mean, I wouldn't want to get into a legal spat with Nokia but if I had Apple's resources....

Re:Sue first, ask questions later

[gtall]

So what you mean is there is a cabal of companies working together to limit competition by limiting entry thus making it a non-free market. And somehow Apple must accede to this regime. How fetching.

Re:Sue first, ask questions later

[Anonymous Coward]

I mean, can't the legal teams for both companies see this down the road

Yes, they can. Lawsuit means they get paid, like, a lot, so they may encourage lawsuit over settling out of court.

If the legal teams can see that far down the road, why wouldn't they encourage lawsuits?

Re:Sue first, ask questions later

[sopssa]

Microsoft big enough for you?

Re:Sue first, ask questions later

[TheRaven64]

Most lawyers I've met want an interesting challenge to their reasoning and debating skills. The money's just a way of keeping score.

Re:Sue first, ask questions later

[dunkelfalke]

Microsoft, Vodafone, Cisco, Intel, Samsung Electronics...

Re:Sue first, ask questions later

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Again, I'm being up-front and telling you I'm ignorant here: Is Microsoft even spending in the neighborhood of the same amount of money, or are they spending less on licenses because they're not actually making phones? Not to make a pun here, I'm just trying to make sure it's an apples-to-apples sort of thing.

Re:Sue first, ask questions later

[JonathanBoyd]

The patents Nokia is complaining about are required to be licensed under reasonable and not discriminatory terms. Nokia wanted to charge Apple more for licensing than they were charging other companies. Apple was happy to pay the standard fees, but weren't happy to be gouged. Nokia needs to lose this to make sure no-one tries to shut down the possibility of competition again.

Re:Sue first, ask questions later

[sopssa]

They are spending less of course, because they're only doing the OS part. But because of that their profits are smaller too, so the actual percentage going for licensing costs surely could be somewhat same, if not even more.

And I'm sure Microsoft has tons of lawyers specialized on patents examining what goes into Windows and other products, so they surely would have the power to fight it if Nokia's claims would really be false.

Re:Sue first, ask questions later

[fractoid]

Is it really cheaper to sue for peace? I mean, can't the legal teams for both companies see this down the road and come to some sort of mutual agreement in advance? It'd sure save a lot of time and money, not to mentioning freeing the courts a bit. Why is it acceptable policy to sue instead of discussing?

Yeah, you know what this is REALLY about? The fact that Nokia has just released a few iPhone-class devices that dramatically undercut the inflated prices Apple is asking while providing 99% of the value. Take the 5800 XM for instance, I recently got one and it does about 80% of things just as well as an iphone and the rest it does better. And it's $29/mo where I live compared to $89/mo for an iphone. They're trying to scare competitors out of their marketplace, nothing more nothing less.

Re:Sue first, ask questions later

[E IS mC(Square)]

Umm... if Apple does not want to accede to regime, then why the fuck they don't develop their own R&D and technology instead of using somebody elses? do you even know what you are talking about?

Re:Sue first, ask questions later

[V!NCENT]

So what you mean is there is a cabal of companies working together to limit competition [...]

No. What I am saying is that there is a 'cabal' of companies who encourage competition by sharing, and encourage sharing, of patents so that the entire global market stays healthy and Apple went "Fsck you, we are not going to cross license our patents".

So when Apple 'evolved' the market with multi-touch, they said: Nobody but can have multi-touch and thus limit competition.

Re:Sue first, ask questions later

[DarkOx]

You do understand that lawyers get payed for more than just litigating. Those same lawyers are the ones drafting all the letters between Nokia and Apple. Their day rate might be a bit higher for doing actual litigation; but they make money either way.

Re:Sue first, ask questions later

[V!NCENT]

It's more or less an agreement not to sue each other, that Nokia wanted, untill Apple was there willing to charge for patents (like they always do) which made Nokia say: "OK, want it hardball? You can get it hardball!". And then when Apple said: "No fuck you, we'll play the poor victem role by saying we can't pay normal fees for you patents" while Apple could just share their patents and pay nothing for the Nokia patents.

Re:Sue first, ask questions later

[peragrin]

that's just it Apple shouldn't have to pay a dime for Nokia's patents as they cover the hardware which apple purchases from people who have already paid Nokia for access to those patents.

Nokia wants to double dip charge the hardware manufactures who make the chips, and charge apple to use those chips. Until people realize this then Nokia is going to look like the good guy in this mess.

apple has to pay the manufactures extra to use those patents as they pay nokia already. or do you think Qualcomm who makes the iphones GSM chipset doesn't pay nokia?

Re:Sue first, ask questions later

[UnknowingFool]

From what I understand one of the sticking points is the cross-licensing. Other companies like Motorola, Sony have agreed to cross license their cell phone patents in order to get Nokia's cell phone patents. In Apple's case (according to Apple), Nokia didn't want just their patents related to cell phones but their patents related to everything else like multi-touch, computer technology, etc. We don't know the whole story really.

Re:Sue first, ask questions later

[peragrin]

But apple buys it's GSM chips from qualcomm who charges extra to cover the patent licensing they have to pay Nokia for.

NOKIA wants to charge not only the people who make the devices but every company who sells a products with that uses those devices.

If Dell started selling a GSM adaptor for their laptops and bought those adaptors already made so all that had to be done was to solder it into the motherboards, Nokia wants the to charge Dell for selling those adaptors too.

Re:Sue first, ask questions later

[sopssa]

I personally like this improvement. Slashdotters aren't called fanboys anymore, but shareholders. Sounds a lot more classy and like everyone on slashdot is rich.

Re:Sue first, ask questions later

[jo_ham]

And Nokia said "give us multi touch for essentially free or we will make it very difficult for you to operate a cellphone because we control the patents on talking to celltowers"

"you can roll your own cell towers of course..."

This is not just all Apple. Both companies are slugging it out here - neither one playing nice. It's not really in Apple's interests (or Nokia's) to have this out in court if they could come to a cross licensing agreement. The only obvious result of this is that they simply don't agree on what each other's patents are worth.

It's cheaper to just cross licence; that is has got this far is an indication that they are fundamentally disagreeing on some serious points, mainly financial ones.

It's not easy to be a new player to a big game that has been sewn up by other companies, especially if you come in with a new product that has some things that the big boys haven't seen before. Now they want that tech for themselves as the price of admission to the game for much less than Apple really want to give it up for. On the other side, the big boys have put together a big cell network with a lot of invested R&D and by nature of the design, Apple needs to use patented tech to be able to make a phone in the first place, so now it comes swanning in, late to the party after the heavy R&D is done with a flashy phone ready to start taking sales away from the big boys....

You can see it from both sides. They both have a case here, and it's just a matter of working out what each other's patents are worth.

Re:Sue first, ask questions later

[dunkelfalke]

RAND terms are only available for GSM association members. Apple hasn't joined the association so RAND terms don't apply for them.

Re:Sue first, ask questions later

[willy_me]

Everybody has patents and everybody is sharing them. Simple.

Not quite that simple. Different patents have different values so a straight trade does not always work. In addition, Nokia promised to make their patents available so that they would become part of the 3G standard. So Nokia can not use it's patents to force another company (in this case Apple) to share their patents. They are required to offer a deal similar to those offered to other companies - for example, x dollars/device for the rights to create a 3G device.

The patents Apple holds are purely fluff. You can easily create a 3G device that does not intrude onto Apple IP. For this reason, Apple can charge whatever they want - or not even make them available. Other companies can simply work around them. You can not say the same about the patents held by Nokia.

So Nokia needs to be fairly compensated for their patents. The key word is "fairly" - this is where the real disagreement is.

Re:Sue first, ask questions later

[cynyr]

lol, Iphone has sizeable marketshare? maybe of the Smartphone market in the USA. Nokia is a very very large cell phone provider(yes they have a couple of smartphones), I'm willing to bet that the few patants that nokia would like of apples are mostly cosmetic, where as nokia's are going to be things like "Talk GSM", "Send your identifier to the tower", "Method of picking the best tower in range".

Re:Sue first, ask questions later

[Tuntematon]

If Dell started selling a GSM adaptor for their laptops and bought those adaptors already made so all that had to be done was to solder it into the motherboards, Nokia wants the to charge Dell for selling those adaptors too.

It depends how the manufacturer licensed the tech from Nokia. (or from anyone else) Basically there's no way to cut corners, you pay from the technology either yourself directly to the patent owner or you pay the same to the manufacturer who then pays to the patent owner.

Nokia or other patent owners are probably less willing to make such deals with manufacturers as it's better to have more control on pricing than give the control to the manufacturer/subcontractor.

Re:Sue first, ask questions later

[mR.bRiGhTsId3]

I would therefore assume Apple believe it is innocent and therefore sees no reason to cross-license.

Re:Sue first, ask questions later

[arose]

And this is why the patent system is broken, big companies can force the 'small innovator' (the classical emotional case for patents) to cross license (possibly under strict terms imposed on the smaller party. Your advantage is gone, and while you may have access to a big pool of patents now, you can't compete meaningfully as your first mover advantage is gone.

Re:Sue first, ask questions later

[arose]

And Nokia said "give us multi touch for essentially free or we will make it very difficult for you to operate a cellphone because we control the patents on talking to celltowers"

It's not "essentially free" when they get something very valuable for it. Now if Nokia or Apple was paying hard cash for the others patents, but then gave a license for theirs then would the other party have something for free. In the scope of the existing patent system Nokia isn't asking for anything for free.

Re:Sue first, ask questions later

[arose]

or do you think Qualcomm who makes the iphones GSM chipset doesn't pay nokia?

It really depends on the terms Qualcomm has with Nokia to make them, doesn't it? They might have an arrangement where paying license fees for parts is the responsibility of the end user device manufacturer. Pure speculation obviously... just like yours.

Re:Sue first, ask questions later

[reboot246]

But when you're the ones making the rules(Congress, legislatures, etc.), the game is no longer a fair one. Because of so many laws and regulations (some obscure and petty), the common people need lawyers for nearly every aspect of their lives. So you have people making 5 or 20 or 30 bucks an hour paying for service at rates far, far higher than that.

Keeping score . . . . so what does the winner get, a trip to Hell?

Re:Sue first, ask questions later

[KarmaMB84]

Well, Qualcomm as recently as 2005 was charging their own chip customers for additional royalties on top of the price of the chips even when they were buying the chips from Qualcomm itself. It stands to reason that Qualcomm believes that buying a physical chip from them does not convey a patent license to actually use the chip. Why should Nokia?

Re:Sue first, ask questions later

[JonathanBoyd]

You don't make any sense. You appear to be an illiterate Apple-hater.

Re:Sue first, ask questions later

[Anonymous Coward]

So what you mean is there is a cabal of companies working together to limit competition by limiting entry thus making it a cartel. And somehow Apple must accede to this regime. How fetching.

FTFY.

Re:Sue first, ask questions later

[Anonymous Coward]

"This is not just all Apple. Both companies are slugging it out here "

We know that. Prior pro-Nokia posts have acknowledged that. That is the nature of disputes. That's not the point of this debate, although you may be trying to re-establish the grounds of it because you're getting your ass kicked.

What is is who is at fault with no wanting to license or cross license, namely Nokia does cross license, Apple has been saying "screw your patents and we ain't giving you access to ours."

"It's cheaper to just cross licence"

Umm, yeah, that's what people have been saying. Nokia cross licenses. Apple isn't. Yet, strangely, you side with Apple.

"You can see it from both sides."

Yes, you can. But it seems the new player wants to change the rules of the patent game because of who they are. Which, of course, is fine, but Apple has been dicks in the past on their IP far more than Nokia has, so it's astounding that given prior history, people are backing Apple because, well, they're Apple.

Re:Sue first, ask questions later

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you not think Nokia has been negotiating with Apple from the moment they released the iphone (3 years), they finally got sick of the delay tactics and went to the courts. This is a bit of tit for tat on Apple's part.

3 years ago isn't long enough ago however.

Nokia is claiming all Apple computers also violate their patents, and Apple has been selling computers since the late 1970's.

If it was at all true that all Apple computers violate that patent, they SHOULD have entered negotiations way longer than 3 years ago.

Apple violating RF/radio related patents using the iPhone I can see.

Apple violating GUI patents is a possibility as well with the iPhone and iPod, but that is much more of an actual argument for a court, as both companies have plenty of their own innovations/inventions in that area (and unrelated to that, both companies have plenty of patents in that area too.)

Apple computers? Nokia is SCOing it on this one for stating it so many times and not even being in that business.
I'd assume Nokia has informed at least Apple and the court which patents over their computers they feel are violated, but no one else has seen squat as far as an inkling of evidence.

Re:Sue first, ask questions later

[Svartalf]

I fear that Multitouch is worth quite a bit less than the R&D the phone device companies have pitched in here. It's a nice, nifty feature, but if Bilski is upheld or made more stringent by the SCOTUS, it's worth QUITE a bit less as it's a software patent- not to mention that it's not in the same scope and scale as the stuff Nokia, Qualcomm, and a few others have come up with in this space.

Apple'd be better served by playing ball here on this one as they've quite a bit more to lose than Nokia does in the big-picture sense of things here.

Re:Sue first, ask questions later

[Anonymous Coward]

Other companies didn't seem to have issues with Nokia's terms, though ?

Those other companies all got the same price in those terms, yet Apple was given a price many multiples higher, and was the ONLY one.

So of course other companies won't have issue with not-insane prices. You still fail to point out how that situation is related to this one.

Re:Sue first, ask questions later

[jo_ham]

I don't normally reply to AC, but perhaps you accidentally checked the post anon box - there are actual sentences in this reply.

I'm not taking sides either way here, it's just that everyone seems to be immediately siding with Nokia here, without even looking at the nature of the dispute.

Apple has cross licenced before, and will do so again, but they are equally not just going to accept any terms Nokia holds them to ransom for since they *need* Nokia's patents to use GSM. Apple's complaint is that as a standard holder they are being discriminatory by attempting to bar entry to the standard in order to get more patents/more cash out of Apple.

I'm not saying Apple doesn't want to cross licence, but you seem to be trying to paint this as all Apple's fault - both companies are negotiating the value of the patents they hold and are not agreeing.

Apple is willing to pay what other third parties are paying, Nokia wants more (allegedly). The bracketed word is what all the fuss is about. That's what the litigation is all about.

They eventually will settle and cross licence.

Re:Sue first, ask questions later

[jo_ham]

It's not just multi touch that they're after though - it was just one example.

It's not in Apple's interests to fight against this, as people have said, it is surely easier to just pay for use of the GSM patents - no one is questioning Nokia's R&D or ownership or validity of the patents in question, and Apple obviously doesn't want to just *not* pay for patents (as a large company with its own patents, it simply cannot be pursuing this angle). The question entirely comes down to what is "fair" - which ordinarily doesn't matter, but since GSM is a standard, Nokia has certain obligations with regard to licencing the patents that are involved in it, in exchange for it being ratified as a standard and Apple are claiming (not sure how accurately) that Nokia are not in keeping with that obligation.

I'm not sure how it will play out, but I don't think Apple are going to go this far into a litigation battle rather than simply cross licencing with Nokia unless they have serious concerns with it (or think they genuinely have something that need addressing). They may be a big and litigious company, but they're ultimately not stupid (in a business sense).

I have posted a lot in this discussion and it seems like (or can be read) that I am just blindly siding with Apple - I'm actually not trying to take sides. If Apple are in the wrong here they will eventually be forced into a settlement that they may not want, but the general tone of all the comments has been "Nokia = can do no wrong", Apple = evil, wants-its-own-way, wants-to-ignore-the-rules" when I just don't think it is that simple. I very much doubt the comments would have played out the way they did if this was Nokia vs RIM, for example - it would have been much more balanced between pro-Nokia, pro-RIM and those in the middle who have no bias one way or the other.

Re:Sue first, ask questions later

[E IS mC(Square)]

Apple fanboi army with mod points. Yay!

Re:Sue first, ask questions later

[dr. chuck bunsen]

From what I've read, Nokia was demanding more from Apple than any other company they license to. So sure, Apple needs to license from Nokia, but Nikia is simply trying to cash in on the success of the iPhone and demand more money from them. which is greedy BS.

Re:Sue first, ask questions later

[Eil]

Is it really cheaper to sue for peace? I mean, can't the legal teams for both companies see this down the road...

They certainly can. And when they look down that road, what they see are enormous legal fees, raises, and at least promotion or two.

Re:Sue first, ask questions later

[ifwm]

And you appear to be factually mistaken about the cost requirement.

Re:Sue first, ask questions later

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Wow. I bet the hypocrisy of that statement was totally lost on you, too.

Re:Sue first, ask questions later

[__aardcx5948]

FWIW, I've an 5800 XM too. It sucks balls. It's so slow, that just flipping the mobile over to rotate the screen takes seconds in some cases. Nothing is instant on this phone, you have to wait for everything. If this is even remotely comparable to the iPhone...

Seriously, not a joke: Flip the phone on its side, open the applications folder. Wait 7 seconds, and they show up. At least on my 5800. Did I mention that it hangs, occasionally?

Re:Sue first, ask questions later

[Weezul]

Apple clearly and knowingly infringed upon GSM for several years. So the courts will eventually award Nokia massive damages, those damages could exceed the total value of all iPhones sold thus far. Nokia was extremely generous to offer merely cross licensing plus royalties going forward to cover this. Nokia presumably offered this based upon Apple being "one of the big boy who are not supposed to sue one another". Apple then started fight. Apple would never have had this problem if they'd merely licensed the patents like everyone else from the beginning.

p.s. Multi-touch is almost worthless as a patents since it's unenforceable in most countries and easy to work around, but owning a license prevents Apple from patent trolling you and saves you from worrying about how much to work around.

Re:Sue first, ask questions later

[Anonymous Coward]

And you don't think part of the iPhone's development involved the attempts to hammer out a deal on the GSM patents? It's not like they "forgot" that GSM patents were involved.

Re:Sue first, ask questions later

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice speculation there. Did you actually try to find out anything?

Re:Sue first, ask questions later

[mdwh2]

I love my 5800. Sure, there may be some things that the Iphone does better, but then there are things the Iphone does worse. Hell, even my 5 year old cheapo Motorola V980 had things that the Iphone models couldn't do, and in some cases still can't do.

And anyhow - the 5800 is a fraction of the price of the Apple phones (about half price on UK PAYG prices), so what do you expect? It's not going to have as fast a processor at that price. There are higher end Nokia models - and they've been making "iPhone-class devices" long before the first Iphone was even thought of.

Did I mention that it hangs, occasionally?

Never had a hang, mine just works.

Re:Sue first, ask questions later

[fbjon]

It has nothing to do with phones. The patents Nokia have are essential to the GSM standard, and are thus licensed for a reasonable price to members of the standards body, which Apple apparently don't want to be a member of. More here.

Re:Sue first, ask questions later

[__aardcx5948]

Maybe you're right, it doesn't get better at this price.

Re:Sue first, ask questions later

[fbjon]

Manufacturing a chip and distributing it in a device are two different uses of the technology. Besides, what if instead of charging the chip manufacturer $10, they charge $5 and then another $5 from the device manufacturer?

That's right, nobody here knows how much they charge, so no need to rant.

Re:Sue first, ask questions later

[Anonymous Coward]

Jesus, the fanboys sure know how to misread.

Re:Sue first, ask questions later

[DMiax]

Does Apple even have cell-phone related patents? If it does not then theyu should give something else or pay more in cash.

Re:Sue first, ask questions later

[DMiax]

Yes, they want to be paid from two people instead of charging only one with double (or more) price. Their patents their terms.

Re:Sue first, ask questions later

[UnknowingFool]

Apple probably has a few. Some of them of course might not be defensible but they are bound to have a few. Again, it's all rumor and hearsay what the real sticking points are.

Re:Sue first, ask questions later

[fractoid]

I had the application-folder lag after my first install-every-crap-app-I-could-find spree, it's because it takes a while to load the icons for user-installed applications. Make a folder called 'crap' and move all your blinky lights, sparkler simulator, lighter simulator, and all the other crud into it.

There's no multi-touch, it struggles a bit with youtube videos and the overall experience isn't quite as polished as with the iPhone. I've had it hang a couple of times, too, and the web browser crashes on some large pages. It's not perfect, but it has no real competition in the $29/mo price bracket. Places it wins out over the iPhone are the higher-res 16x9 screen, openness of the platform, and the form factor which is more phone-like and so more comfortable to make calls with.

Re:Sue first, ask questions later

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed.

Apple (market cap 185bn), a behemoth of a company with a legendary legal staff and a latecomer to the mobile phone business with a product that copied liberally from Palm, Danger, Nokia, and Microsoft, and a company that spends virtually nothing on research, is screwing Nokia (market cap 45bn), a company that has been in the smart phone business for more than a decade longer, and has research labs all over the world.

Re:Sue first, ask questions later

[arose]

I was commenting on the general attitude of "just cross license". It may 'work' between big companies, but at that point it's just a way to keep others out of the market.

Re:Sue first, ask questions later

[V!NCENT]

And thus they will have to pay for the 800+ patents, while they could just join and share their 12 patents with everybody and get to beifit from a 812+ patent bank...

Re:Sue first, ask questions later

[CountBrass]

It's because Apple claims the terms Nokia have been offering are different from those they offer to other phone makers. Other 'phone makers pay a fee, Nokia wants Apple to 'pay' by handing over some of their patents. This (if true) is illegal, and the basis of Apple's complaint, because it's not the same deal being offered to others.

Re:Sue first, ask questions later

[alexo]

Those other companies all got the same price in those terms, yet Apple was given a price many multiples higher, and was the ONLY one.

[citation needed]

Apple Counter files against Nokia not files

[Hungus]

In all fairness, this is a response to Nokia's filing last month to ban Apple imports. So so far it has been:

Nokia sues Apple
Apple counter sues Nokia

Nokia seeks to ban Apple Imports via ITC
Apple responds by seeking to ban Nokia imports via the ITC

info from Bloomberg: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=ao_5HVbD_IRM

Re:Apple Counter files against Nokia not files

[sopssa]

Yeah, just like the summary says on the second line...

The thing is, Nokia has all the rights to do that since Apple keeps infringing their patents and doesn't even agree to cross license patents like every phone manufacturer does. This is just Apple being childish and trying to kick back in tears.

Re:Apple Counter files against Nokia not files

[Jurily]

Yeah, it's almost like they're competing for something.

Re:Apple Counter files against Nokia not files

[Uberbah]

Other than the part where Nokia wanted more money and more patents from Apple than from other manufacturers, of course. Somebody might be acting childish, but it sure isn't Apple.

Re:Apple Counter files against Nokia not files

[Savage-Rabbit]

The thing is, Nokia has all the rights to do that since Apple keeps infringing their patents and doesn't even agree to cross license patents like every phone manufacturer does. This is just Apple being childish and trying to kick back in tears.

You could also point out that Nokia has been a major player on the mobile phone market for a long time. According to wikipedia their share of the device market was 38% in Q3 2009. Alluvasudden some upstart invades *their* mobile phone market, steals a big chunk of *their* share of the smartphone market, with an innovative new media-player/smart-phone this competitor succeeds in selling apps and music hand over fist where Nokia has had only mediocre success and to make matters worse no matter what they do Nokia can't seem to beat the Apple iPhone even when they practically copy it. Now Nokia is trying to play rough to hurt their competitor. Do those tactics remind you of anybody else? I think Nokia's problem is that Apple isn't some smalltime competitor they can just step on and squash under foot. They used to make good products but lately Nokia phones have just, well.... just plain sucked. Perhaps Nokia should pour it's energy into innovating and trying to come up with a phone that causes customers on their way to buy an iPhone to peel off to the Nokia display stand and buy something else. Either way, I don't thing they can hope for any kind of success if they intend to sue their way out of the problem the iPhone has become for them. This stinks of desperation.

Re:Apple Counter files against Nokia not files

[IamTheRealMike]

Well, that's what Apple claim. There are two problems with this.

The first one is, how does Apple know what other companies are required to pay? This article claims the agreements are secret and I see no reason to disbelieve that, it'd be standard for this sort of thing.

The second problem is that Apple have sadly established a track record in the last few years of being flexible with the truth, whereas Nokia have not. For example, covering up issues with Jobs' health and playing cute with the FCC over Google iPhone apps. In constrast the only time I read about Nokia in the news is when they've done something cool, like launching a new product.

Simply put, some companies have more credibility than others, and Apple is on the losing side in this one.

Re:Apple Counter files against Nokia not files

[sopssa]

While I also think Nokia's phones haven't been up to quality in recent years (I switched to HTC and love it), they have a long history in developing phones and the technology behind it. They have spend millions on R&D. They fairly cross license patents with other manufacturers, like every one else does (theres not so many manufacturers anyways), but Apple refuses to do this.

Even if their phones aren't as good as some competitors currently, Nokia is one of the companies that actually deserve to be paid their patent royalties.

While patent laws are on Nokia's side too, they aren't even lowering to patent trolling - they're just asking Apple to behave good and like everyone else on the small industry and cross license their patents and pay the small share like everyone else does (3-4% per phone sale if I remember correctly, and Apple gets the same back if Nokia uses their patents). Is this too much to ask?

Re:Apple Counter files against Nokia not files

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

You say that as if Apple doesn't have patents of its own, doesn't do its own R&D, and hasn't just shown the whole industry how to make a decent smartphone.

Re:Apple Counter files against Nokia not files

[TheRaven64]

Yes, that sums it up quite well. Apple has done absolutely nothing to develop the current standards used for mobile communication, while Nokia is responsible for much of the work that went into the GSM evolution standards. The iPhone is a good implementation, but it is building heavily on the work of others. Compared to other phones, the only thing that is novel is the interface, and you will find papers describing almost all of the interface elements in the iPhone written by people outside Apple in HCI journals and conference proceedings over the last decade - some even by Microsoft Research (which I find particularly amusing since they haven't put them into Wince).

You will find no papers by Apple employees. Apple does not do research. They do product development. There is a big difference: every company in the market benefits from research, while only the funding company benefits from development.

Re:Apple Counter files against Nokia not files

[E IS mC(Square)]

You just defined Apple right there!

Re:Apple Counter files against Nokia not files

[c_forq]

From my glance over it the issue isn't Apple not wanting to cross license patents, it seems to be more about a few certain patents Nokia wants and the price Nokia wants to pay for them.

Re:Apple Counter files against Nokia not files

[Anonymous Coward]

Nokia: we license our stuff for few percent of the phone price Apple: We will pay 5$ per phone Nokia: No, in fact you get more money from AT&T, we want same percentage from that too Apple: No, we will rather pay the original percentage Nokia: too late Apple: see you in court Nokia: ok

Re:Apple Counter files against Nokia not files

[jo_ham]

You also have to weigh the fact that Apple is a big target and is under much heavier scrutiny - just look at the way Greenpeace treated them in their "well researched" green technology/environmental roundup, where companies like Dell and HP scored much better despite being 20 years behind Apple in several areas related to environmental factors like removal of BFRs from products, removal of particular toxins from packaging, cables, lead free solder, energy use etc etc.

Apple are not blameless by any means, but in general they are not the textbook "evil" company that some people like to make out they are with some of the casual commentary I have seen in these comments so far. Usually little throwaway opinion bits made to look like facts and then used to support a later point, that sort of thing.

Incidentally, what did you really expect them to do regarding Jobs' health? The health of a CEO (even one as pivotal as Steve) is a private matter. They're not just going to tell you "oh yeah, he's touch and go and having treatment for pancreatic cancer...", they are going to remain tight lipped. It's no different from any other large company. You can argue that Jobs is a "special case" because of his "magic touch" at Apple, but that really doesn't hold water. His health issues are private. I didn't like the eventual way he essentially had to come out and openly talk about his condition and treatment in a public setting. He was hounded incessantly until he gave it up.

Re:Apple Counter files against Nokia not files

[MistrBlank]

I'm also pretty sure that multitouch is not a technology that is necessary in the mobile phone market. I've seen plenty of new phones with keypads and no touch screens lately for a large market of users that don't need an all-in-one device. And as Apple has shown, multitouch devices are expansive beyond the cell phone/telephone marketplace.

If Nokia is infringing, it is violation of Apple's patents, end of story.
If Nokia is holding back Apple (and any other entry) due to tower communication technology licensing, that is a very monopolistic tactic, Nokia is not in their right, end of story.

Let them fight it out in court. Hopefully someone with sense will preside over it and see what is going on (and maybe take a slight jab at Apple as well).

Re:Apple Counter files against Nokia not files

[jo_ham]

I think you mean "the single GSM chip that gets bolted on to the iPhone to make it talk with the cell tower" where you say "builds heavily on the work of others". The rest of the phone is not the GSM chip.

Also, that chip us manufactured by Qualcomm, who already licences the patents involved from Nokia and and sells a turnkey chip solution to third party manufacturers so they can make phones. Didn't Apple already pay Nokia by proxy? Or does the cost of buying the chips not include the patent cost, that the chip manufacturer has already paid?

The "only thing novel is the interface" is *everything* about the phone - there are only so many ways you can make a candybar phone. You can't really innovate there (well, Nokia has tried with that cube phone that folds out and looks odd, but generally you are limited in what you can do). The interface of most phones is *awful*. If you've ever tried to use some of these phones you wonder who on earth designed it. So Apple comes along with a large touchscreen UI with gestures and multi touch and is simple to operate. It is by no means the first, but in a similar way to the iPod (again, not the first mp3 player) it is one of the first UIs to really work well and is actually pleasant and intuitive to use. Again, it is not the only good UI, but it is a very good one.

If people have already come up with these interface ideas before (and I have no doubt people have thought of them) then why didn't we see them in widescale use on phones and portable electronics (or personal computers) before the iPhone? I'm not disputing that someone in Redmond thought up some cool new UI trick, but if you are suggesting Apple copied it then fair play to them. Some guy describes it in a journal that is open to read (and presumably patents it), and Apple decide to use it. If it's patented, they pay royalties. Isn't that how it;s meant to work?

If creating really good UIs (note: not perfect, I am not saying that OS X and iPhone UI are perfect, just really good) then why don;t we see more of them, if there are so many people innovating in this area? Apple are very good at combining and refining and making things work and it is disingenuous to claim that they do no innovation of their own.

Their track history of products suggests otherwise - if these things are trivial and easy, where is the competition?

Incidentally, the creation of firewire, usb and a few other standards would like to have a word with you about "no research".

Re:Apple Counter files against Nokia not files

[Anonymous Coward]

. So so far it has been:

Step 1)Nokia sues Apple
Step 2) Apple counter sues Nokia

Step 3)Nokia seeks to ban Apple Imports via ITC
Step 4) Apple responds by seeking to ban Nokia imports via the ITC

info from Bloomberg: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=ao_5HVbD_IRM

Step 5) Lawyers profit

Re:Apple Counter files against Nokia not files

[TheRaven64]

Incidentally, the creation of firewire, usb and a few other standards would like to have a word with you about "no research".

USB was created by Compaq, Digital, IBM, Intel, Northern Telecom, and Microsoft. The work Apple did on FireWire was in 1986. Back then, AT&T did a lot of research at Bell Labs. Apple was a very different company back then. Now they are a lot more product-focussed.

I'm not denying that the iPhone is a good implementation - I said it was in my post - but it is a good implementation of a lot of other people's ideas.

Re:Apple Counter files against Nokia not files

[oji-sama]

And look at the way Greenpeace handled Nokia. I would think that they would have nailed Nokia also, if there was a reason for it. (Although I don't think this is directly relevant to this discussion)

Re:Apple Counter files against Nokia not files

[jo_ham]

Apple also contributed to the USB protocol as part of the USB-IF, and were active in the creation of firewire right up to its current inception, not just in 1986 when it was first proposed (Sony and TI also featured heavily in the creation of what eventually became the 1394 standard).

I know you said it was a good implementation, you also claimed that Apple does "no R&D", which is demonstrably false.

Re:Apple Counter files against Nokia not files

[cynyr]

total cost of the use of Nokias patents may be "payable" by the "value" of the cross licensed patents. "Value" as seen by Nokia. Nokia may not care about Apples patents very much, thus give them a low value. not all patents are worth the same to all parties. so the RAND rate for the use of some of Nokias may be $3000000/yr but they work out that Motorola patents are worth $1000000/yr and thus Motorola pays Nokia $2000000/yr. now along comes apple, and they have patents to offer too, but negoations only get apple to $250000/yr, they then owe Nokia $2750000/yr cash. Now that would look unfair to someone that values Apple patents higher than that. but its still the same rate. imo

Re:Apple Counter files against Nokia not files

[Carewolf]

I am with Nokia on this issue, but don't make the mistake of thinking they are good guys. Nokia has traditionally been the Microsoft of the cell phone industry. Ignoring standards, making their own incompatible standards and even making phones with severe security issues. They had SMS viruses at one point! Also Nokia has been pushing for software patents in Europe, making them a sworn enemy of many geeks.

Re:Apple Counter files against Nokia not files

[Anonymous Coward]

Having had relations who've had pancreatic cancer, you may be unaware of how the disease works.

Your digestion goes completely askew. Your poo becomes what I call 'Evil Poo' and has a scent that sticks to the walls. You also have seconds -- mere seconds -- between everything being completely okay and your colon spasming. Meaning you often end up fouling your own trousers. And, worse, it happens at random.

Yeah, no need to respect a fellow's privacy at all.

Re:Apple Counter files against Nokia not files

[Svartalf]

If Nokia is holding back Apple (and any other entry) due to tower communication technology licensing, that is a very monopolistic tactic, Nokia is not in their right, end of story.

You obviously don't understand how Patents work in the first place.

If I hold a patent I can bar damned near ANYONE from implementing it as a manufacturing endeavor- even with people not doing it for profits. Now, in the act of doing so, I might run afoul of certain anti-trust laws in some countries- but in most cases, I will not.

If Apple's not ponying up the licensing, they shouldn't be allowed to sell their stuff that uses the tech. Now, nobody's disclosed what Apple's been offered as terms for this access. Odds on, it's along the lines of licensing multitouch and a few other things out to all the players in the mobile device space that's part of the GSM consortium- which is par for the course and part of the RAND terms extended to all the GSM consortium members (even though Apple's not a member right at the moment...). If this is the case, Apple's being ill-behaved and should be on the receiving end of this- and I've little doubt in my mind about that being a part of this. Apple's viewing, rightly, that they have some "secret sauce" in multitouch that if they cross-license, there's less value in an iPhone as a result (If multitouch is the only real selling point, it's not as good a product as they're making out to be... ;-) )- which would be right.

Unfortunately for Apple, they have to play ball here- or take the iPhone out of circulation because it's infringing and they're unwilling to play by the rules of the game. Unless the terms are disclosed and found to not be RAND, there's little room for Apple to frame this as monopolistic (Patents are monopolies of reproduction given to companies and inventors by governments to foster and promote the furtherance of science and technology...).

Re:Apple Counter files against Nokia not files

[jo_ham]

My point was that Greenpeace nailed Apple for all sorts of things that Apple very easily and demonstrably proved were not the case, while HP and Dell were giving good marks by Greenpeace for much less.

It's only relevant in regard to the way people scrutinize Apple. Greenpeace heavily criticised Apple for BFRs, and awarded HP a higher score for "planning make a plan to eliminate BFRs" (ie, not even actually doing much) where Apple had already removed the bulk of BFRs from their products several years before and was almost totally done - years and years ahead of HP, yet they were scored lower by Greenpeace.

I'm not saying that Apple is not at fault, or that they should be trusted implicitly, but you can't always believe everything you read, even if it is negative.

Re:Apple Counter files against Nokia not files

[Anonymous Coward]

In constrast the only time I read about Nokia in the news is when they've done something cool...

...like collaborating with the Iranian regime in tracking, catching, torturing, and killing peaceful protestors.

Re:Apple Counter files against Nokia not files

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, that chip us manufactured by Qualcomm, who already licences the patents involved from Nokia and and sells a turnkey chip solution to third party manufacturers so they can make phones. Didn't Apple already pay Nokia by proxy? Or does the cost of buying the chips not include the patent cost, that the chip manufacturer has already paid?

Chip manufacturers like Qualcomm and Broadcom license the patents to make the chips, but those licenses do not extend to end products. It is Apple's responsibility to license the patents for the iPhone. This is not particular to Nokia's patents: it is the way the whole patent system works.

As far as Apple's R&D for Firewire, USB and other standards, Apple did initiate Firewire but it didn't create Firewire by itself (major contributions were also made by engineers from Texas Instruments, Sony, Digital Equipment Corporation, IBM, and INMOS/SGS Thomson (now STMicroelectronics)). Apple had nothing to do with USB development. Apple is reported to have developed Light Peak (the next gen alternative to Firewire and USB), but they have supposedly handed this off to Intel. Yes, Apple do R&D, but not as much as Nokia by far.

Re:Apple Counter files against Nokia not files

[kiwirob]

Apple purchased FingerWorks and with it got all the patents and the key players in the company that had been researching the area for years in the specific implementation of capacitance based recognition of multi-touch movement. Microsoft's technology on their Surface product was light based recognition from memory, two different technologies or two different implementations of a similar idea.

The thing is that you can not patent an idea. Apple have not attempted to do this. What they have got are patents on in a specific implementation of an idea, in this case capacitance based recognition of multi-touch and gestures. They fairly purchased the patents and key researchers in this area, payed for further R&D into practical implementations of this technology and developed a ground breaking product with makes use of their technology.

Nokia agreed for license their patents relating to GSM on Fair and Reasonable Non Discriminatory terms. According to Apples response to the original complaint they where offered these patents at 3 times the standard rate charged to other cell phone manufactures or the same rate with Nokia have full access to Apples patent portfolio.

Lets not forget that Apple also created one of the first PDA's in the Newton and developed a whole bunch of technology and patents relating to PDA functionality that Nokia have been helping themselves to for years without paying Apple a cent.

Re:Apple Counter files against Nokia not files

[mdwh2]

According to wikipedia their share of the device market was 38% in Q3 2009. Alluvasudden some upstart invades *their* mobile phone market, steals a big chunk of *their* share of the smartphone market

A few percent is big? Well, I suppose it is a loss to Nokia, even if it's only a few per cent - but why aren't they going after RIM, as they're a company gaining even higher share than Apple?

and to make matters worse no matter what they do Nokia can't seem to beat the Apple iPhone even when they practically copy it

What? Nokia were making phones long before Apple were around - who's copying who here? And by your own source, they still appear to be beating Apple massively in the market - or let me guess, are you redefining success to mean something else?

Re:Apple Counter files against Nokia not files

[Anonymous Coward]

They're suing because Apple wants to have the cake (their own patents) and eat it too (Nokia's patents). So no cross-licensing. Thus Apple has to pay instead, but Apple doesn't think Nokia put the price low enough. This is about chips in phones, not smooth UIs.

Re:Apple Counter files against Nokia not files

[pydev]

If people have already come up with these interface ideas before (and I have no doubt people have thought of them) then why didn't we see them in widescale use on phones and portable electronics (or personal computers) before the iPhone?

Because they require a lot of power: bigger screens, faster processors, etc. The hardware is also expensive. Apple can do that in their premium market, Nokia couldn't do that in their mass market. They also require a fundamental rewrite of the OS to support this stuff, but Nokia couldn't afford to throw away their existing platform, which was (and is) extremely widely used. Nokia had been thinking about new platforms, but iPhone beat them.

Apple copied it then fair play to them. Some guy describes it in a journal that is open to read (and presumably patents it), and Apple decide to use it. If it's patented, they pay royalties. Isn't that how it;s meant to work?

Apple can get away with it, but that doesn't make it "fair". The industry only works because everybody invests in research and contributes to a common pool of expertise and people; Apple, however, isn't doing their part. Google, IBM, Microsoft, and others hire tons of CS Ph.D. level researchers, Apple doesn't; who do you think would go to CS grad school if there were no jobs? And if nobody goes to CS grad school, who is going to write those journal publications that Apple gets its ideas from?

The second problem is that Apple tries to build patent portfolios around areas where they really didn't invest much in research in the first place by patenting small increments--a common and working patent strategy, just not a very nice one.

Incidentally, the creation of firewire, usb and a few other standards would like to have a word with you about "no research".

Apple had a reasonable research effort in the 90's, but they killed all of that. Apple really needs to grow up, become less of a parasite, and build up a research lab again. Probably Jobs has to leave the company first, though.

Re:Apple Counter files against Nokia not files

[Anonymous Coward]

Lets not forget that Apple also created one of the first PDA's in the Newton and developed a whole bunch of technology and patents relating to PDA functionality that Nokia have been helping themselves to for years without paying Apple a cent.

The first significant PDA was the Psion, developed several years before the Newton. Symbian, Nokia's smartphone OS, is a descendant of that. Newton combined ideas from that and the Go Corp pen computer. I'm not aware of any fundamentally new technologies in the Newton.

Nokia agreed for license their patents relating to GSM on Fair and Reasonable Non Discriminatory terms. According to Apples response to the original complaint they where offered these patents at 3 times the standard rate charged to other cell phone manufactures or the same rate with Nokia have full access to Apples patent portfolio.

That seems RAND to me, given that other cell phone manufacturers do have patent cross licensing agreements with Nokia. Apple seems to want to pay the same rate as other cell phone manufacturers without cross-licensing. How is that fair?

Re:Apple Counter files against Nokia not files

[drinkypoo]

The second problem is that Apple have sadly established a track record in the last few years of being flexible with the truth, whereas Nokia have not.

I grew up using macs and amigas but I lost all faith in Apple when they buried their techinfo library entry on the Rev 1 B&W G3 UDMA data corruption failure because it made them look like assholes: they instructed affected customers to purchase either an IDE card or the FWB toolkit to use a slower DMA mode... at their own expense. Then the document disappeared when the TIL was folded into the KB, even though both earlier and later articles survived. Today the majority of mac fanboys will deny that it ever happened in spite of ample documentation on xlr8 your mac and lowendmac...

Re:Apple Counter files against Nokia not files

[drinkypoo]

I have an HTC Raphael and it's garbage. Not only is the WinCE stack pure shit (community-contributed reflashes are not only better-featured, but also more stable!) but the hardware is crap. There's a known issue with the keyboard cable pulling out that can be fixed with electrical tape, but refurb Raphaels all have the same problem sooner or later. Meanwhile I just picked up a Nokia 1661 for use while I'm in Panama and while it does less than a tenth of what the Raphael does (In my case, it's a Fuze, but that's fairly irrelevant, it's just a logo and a keyboard arrangement) it actually does all of it well.

I am willing to believe that HTC has better devices, but I will always think of them as lemon-squeezers.

Re:Apple Counter files against Nokia not files

[jo_ham]

Why do Nokia have to throw away anything before they start something new? What's stopping them doing that now? Why is their current product base a burden on new products?

So, Apple aren't "doing their part" with Webkit, CUPS, OpenCL, libdispatch, Zeroconf, Darwin just to name a few open source ones. No innovation in multicore management or anything, or major contributions to KHTML, or work on H.264. I'm sure they certainly haven't contributed anything at all on any of those fronts, unlike Google (is Google not evil today?), IBM or MS.

Apple are no angels, but they're a far cry from the entity you are painting them as.

Re:Apple Counter files against Nokia not files

[cbhacking]

Out of curiosity, why shouldn't Nokia have the right to ask this? If there is a set price for something (think grocery store), you pay what it says on the price tag. On the other hand, licenses for intellectual property (and contracts in general, actually) are very often negotiated on a case-by-case basis. Clearly, Nokia sees Apple as a greater risk than other companies, and is pricing their technology accordingly. It's not like Nokia doesn't already have plenty of competition; they aren't trying to monopolize GSM phones. However, they own the patents and as best I can tell that means they can license them at whatever price they deem an additional competitor to be worth.

Re:Apple Counter files against Nokia not files

[pydev]

Why do Nokia have to throw away anything before they start something new? What's stopping them doing that now? Why is their current product base a burden on new products?

Nothing was stopping them, it simply was a bit out of sync with their product cycle.

So, Apple aren't "doing their part" with ...

None of that is research.

Apple are no angels, but they're a far cry from the entity you are painting them as.

Oddly enough, there isn't a single good/bad dichotomy.

Apple does great design, great marketing, and decent engineering. They've made useful contributions to standards bodies. Their open source contributions have been improving (but are still not all that significant).

However, their record on research has gone from mediocre to non-existent. If Apple's approach to "research" catches on, graduate computer science programs would dwindle to nothing. Fortunately, Google, Microsoft, IBM, and others are not as selfish and stingy as Apple.

Re:Apple Counter files against Nokia not files

[Daengbo]

Nokia hold 63 patents on essential GSM technology alone. Nokia is only suing over ten of these. Do you seriously think that Nokia is suing just because they can't innovate? Fair, Reasonable, and Non-Discriminatory (FRAND) rates for the patents in question are paid by every cell phone manufacturer: do you think Apple should get a golden ticket allowing free access?

Re:Apple Counter files against Nokia not files

[Daengbo]

So the price is

• 1% with a cross-licensing deal, or
• 3% without one.

As long as that agreement is the same for all players, it's non-discriminatory, fair, and reasonable.

Re:Apple Counter files against Nokia not files

[Grishnakh]

The iPhone is a good implementation, but it is building heavily on the work of others.

Almost everyone who makes something worthwhile is building on the work of others: engineers, artists, authors, musicians, etc. No one creates in a vacuum.

Compared to other phones, the only thing that is novel is the interface, and you will find papers describing almost all of the interface elements in the iPhone written by people outside Apple in HCI journals and conference proceedings over the last decade - some even by Microsoft Research (which I find particularly amusing since they haven't put them into Wince).

That's typical MS. They spend lots of money on their Research department, and then completely ignore their results and put out crappy products. Or, they waste money on really stupid research that culminates in "SongSmith".

You will find no papers by Apple employees. Apple does not do research. They do product development. There is a big difference: every company in the market benefits from research, while only the funding company benefits from development.

If all these other researchers were so great, why couldn't they make a decent product out of their research?

That's the whole problem here. The people who make money aren't people who come up with great inventions, it's the people who figure out how to use these inventions to make really useful products that people want to buy. No one (except the government maybe) is going to pay you to sit around and do research that never produces any useful results, and has only academic interest. But lots of people will pay you for useful products, which may be based on research. If you're smart about your research, you'll figure out how to make money on it by either making useful products with it, or by selling your results to people who can make useful products with it.

I really don't see the problem here. So what if Apple doesn't do any low-level research? They don't have to! They're a maker of phones and computers. Please cite any research papers that DELL has published. I haven't looked, but I'll bet there aren't any. Yet they're a huge and successful company, but for some reason I don't see you complaining about them here. Why would they need to do research? All they do is assemble parts into working computers and sell them. It's the same with Apple, except that they do a few more things (make their own OS and software, make their own music player and phone).

Exactly what kind of research are you expecting from Apple? Inventions related to LCD screens? They buy their screens from someone else who manufactures them. Inventions related to touch screens? Again, they buy that from someone else. In fact, Apple has no manufacturing facilities I'm aware of; everything is made for them by other companies, so any research would be done by or paid for by their suppliers.

Someone whined in another post that multi-touch was invented at least a decade ago. OK, so why haven't we seen any other products with multi-touch? If you're too stupid to make a useful product out of your invention, don't whine when someone else does, years and years later.

Re:Apple Counter files against Nokia not files

[Grishnakh]

Apple had a reasonable research effort in the 90's, but they killed all of that. Apple really needs to grow up, become less of a parasite, and build up a research lab again. Probably Jobs has to leave the company first, though.

Hmm.. Back in the 90s, Apple was a failing company making products no one wanted to buy, and was on the verge of bankruptcy. Then, Jobs took over, made a lot of changes, and now they're extremely profitable and successful.

You think they should go back to the way they were in the 90s? You're obviously a person that should never run a company (or invest in one for that matter).

Re:Apple Counter files against Nokia not files

[Grishnakh]

Nothing was stopping them, it simply was a bit out of sync with their product cycle.

Whine, whine. Obviously, Nokia was outperformed, and made some bad decisions. This isn't Apple's fault.

Are you a Democrat? Blaming someone else for being more successful than you is a common trait with them.

However, their record on research has gone from mediocre to non-existent. If Apple's approach to "research" catches on, graduate computer science programs would dwindle to nothing. Fortunately, Google, Microsoft, IBM, and others are not as selfish and stingy as Apple.

You think Google is going to stop doing PhD-level CS research? Google and Apple have completely different business models. Apple's simply doesn't need a lot of research; they're mostly a systems integrator. They don't design or build hard drives, CPUs, LCD screens, etc., they just put them together into new products. Google needs research for their business, as they're doing data mining on a scale never done before. Apples and oranges.

Why is that no one like you is whining about DELL's lack of research here?

Re:Apple Counter files against Nokia not files

[pydev]

Whine, whine. Obviously, Nokia was outperformed, and made some bad decisions. This isn't Apple's fault.

Who says Nokia made a bad decision? They're still a huge phone manufacturer and they have a kick-ass patent portfolio. They also have nothing to lose in the US. Apple is a niche player, just like they always are, and they have everything to lose.

Apple's simply doesn't need a lot of research; they're mostly a systems integrator.

Exactly what I'm saying.

Why is that no one like you is whining about DELL's lack of research here?

Because we're talking about Nokia and Apple--not Dell--suing each other over mobile phone, wireless, and PDA patents. Hence the question--legal issues aside--who has actually the better claim to having invested in, and invented, many of these technologies. Nokia has a long history of investing in research, while Apple has a long history of building successful businesses on other peoples' technologies and then killing them off.

Are you a Democrat? Blaming someone else for being more successful than you is a common trait with them.

First you ask an inane question like why nobody is criticizing Dell in this thread (read the fscking page title), and then you ask another inane question like that. Evidently, your Mac has rotted your brain.

Re:Apple Counter files against Nokia not files

[Grishnakh]

Who says Nokia made a bad decision? They're still a huge phone manufacturer and they have a kick-ass patent portfolio. They also have nothing to lose in the US. Apple is a niche player, just like they always are, and they have everything to lose.

The previous post was basically defending Nokia for not getting decent products to the market sooner than Apple. Sorry, if you fail in a competition with someone else, "it simply was a bit out of sync with their product cycle" is a lame excuse.

Exactly what I'm saying.
Because we're talking about Nokia and Apple--not Dell--suing each other over mobile phone, wireless, and PDA patents.

No, I'm seeing a whole lot of bashing of Apple here because they don't do a lot of fundamental research--they're not "contributing" is what people like you have been saying here. For you to be consistent, you would need to apply this same line of thinking to DELL, but somehow they get a free pass.

Nokia has a long history of investing in research, while Apple has a long history of building successful businesses on other peoples' technologies and then killing them off.

So it's OK for DELL to not invest in research and build a successful business on other peoples' technologies, but it's not OK for Apple?

I think you're just an Apple hater.

First you ask an inane question like why nobody is criticizing Dell in this thread (read the fscking page title), and then you ask another inane question like that. Evidently, your Mac has rotted your brain.

Sorry, I'm a Linux user, not a Mac user. In case you haven't noticed, most Mac users seem to be fairly liberal (the artsy-fartsy types love Macs), but at least they're not criticizing Apple for being successful.

Lemme guess, you also think we should all start paying giant royalties to Xerox Corp. for all their research work done at PARC, which are the basis of much of what we do with computers (including windowing interfaces), even though Xerox was stupid and basically gave away all their research and didn't capitalize on it?

Re:Apple Counter files against Nokia not files

[pydev]

Back in the 90s, Apple was a failing company

Well, certainly not due to Apple Research. In fact, Apple Research probably made up a little for the pathetic products Apple was producing back then.

You think they should go back to the way they were in the 90s?

I think Apple will go back to the way they were in the 90s if they don't grow up and come up with a better, more stable long term corporate strategy than "Steve Jobs". They nearly went out of business once, and they can crash just as quickly again as they did in the 90s.

I like Apple's designs and I'd like them to become a company that one can buy from without feeling bad about it and without getting screwed in other ways.

Re:Apple Counter files against Nokia not files

[Grishnakh]

Well, certainly not due to Apple Research. In fact, Apple Research probably made up a little for the pathetic products Apple was producing back then.

That's the whole problem. Research is useless, at least on the balance sheet, if you can't make good products that customers want to pay money for. MS Research has this same problem, except that Windows and Office are such giant cash cows that MS can afford to keep throwing money at MSR for a bunch of research that never goes into their products. Other companies don't have that luxury. Maybe Nokia should take a lesson here; instead of wasting so much money on research, they should try spending a little more money to make better phones. Really, it's pretty pathetic when old, established mobile phone makers like Nokia and Motorola can be totally upstaged by Apple, a company that never made any mobile phones until it released the iPhone. The iPhone made all their phones look like crap by comparison.

I think Apple will go back to the way they were in the 90s if they don't grow up and come up with a better, more stable long term corporate strategy than "Steve Jobs". They nearly went out of business once, and they can crash just as quickly again as they did in the 90s.

Only if they go back to making crappy products; what makes you think that's going to happen? Maybe it took Steve Jobs to bring some vision to the place and push them into making good products instead of overpriced, underperforming junk, but surely it can't be that hard to find someone else to do the same.

I like Apple's designs and I'd like them to become a company that one can buy from without feeling bad about it and without getting screwed in other ways.

Screwed? How? Feeling bad? Why, because they made poor little Nokia look bad by making a phone that totally blows away all theirs?

And seriously, if you get screwed by buying Apple products, you did it to yourself. It's not like there isn't any competition out there. Yes, their products are not exactly "open"; that's the way they do things, and most of their customers don't seem to mind. It's not for me, which is why the only Apple product I have is an iPhone (actually, it's my wife's; I don't use the phone much so I just have a cheapie that AT&T gave me for free) and I use Linux. I'm looking forward to Android phones becoming more popular in the future and I might get one of those eventually, but the last thing I read about them was that the touch accuracy sucked, so I'm going to wait a while until these phones are fully baked.

Re:Apple Counter files against Nokia not files

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

Yes, that sums it up quite well. Apple has done absolutely nothing to develop the current standards used for mobile communication, while Nokia is responsible for much of the work that went into the GSM evolution standards.

Yeah, but why should Apple have to pay more than other companies for this work?

Compared to other phones, the only thing that is novel is the interface...

You make it sound as if that's a trivial thing to do. If that's the case, then why did it take so long for someone to design a decent interface?

There is a big difference: every company in the market benefits from research, while only the funding company benefits from development.

Are you saying that consumers haven't benefited from Apple raising the bar?

Re:Apple Counter files against Nokia not files

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

How so?

Re:Apple Counter files against Nokia not files

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

Because they require a lot of power: bigger screens, faster processors, etc.

Sorry, but designing a good GUI is as much about designing within the limitations of the environment as it is about anything else. Look at the original iPod for an example of that.

The industry only works because everybody invests in research and contributes to a common pool of expertise and people; Apple, however, isn't doing their part.

Apple just showed the industry how to make a decent smartphone. Then there are projects like WebKit. And Apple were one of the first to really push USB. Besides, I think that sentence is BS to begin with -- the industry is hardly an open place with free sharing of all technologies.

Google, IBM, Microsoft, and others hire tons of CS Ph.D. level researchers, Apple doesn't; who do you think would go to CS grad school if there were no jobs? And if nobody goes to CS grad school, who is going to write those journal publications that Apple gets its ideas from?

I just don't understand this. Those other companies still exist, right? So what's the big deal? Why should all companies operate the same way? And if Apple somehow did become the only company left, what makes you think they wouldn't do more of those things?

I just don't understand this idea that all companies must contribute something only in a specific way. Just because Apple doesn't focus on certain things, this makes them a parasite? That's absurd.

Re:Apple Counter files against Nokia not files

[pydev]

The previous post was basically defending Nokia for not getting decent products to the market sooner than Apple. Sorry, if you fail in a competition with someone else, "it simply was a bit out of sync with their product cycle" is a lame excuse.

Who says Nokia has failed? Nokia is a huge phone manufacturer and they still have most of the market. The iPhone is still an overpriced niche product with some serious problems. And it remains to be seen whether Apple will be able to remain a player in this market.

No, I'm seeing a whole lot of bashing of Apple here because they don't do a lot of fundamental research--they're not "contributing" is what people like you have been saying here. For you to be consistent, you would need to apply this same line of thinking to DELL, but somehow they get a free pass.

We're talking about a lawsuit between Nokia and Apple here, and we're talking about whether Nokia or Apple has the more credible and defensible case to having invented important smart phone technologies.

So it's OK for DELL to not invest in research and build a successful business on other peoples' technologies, but it's not OK for Apple?

Apple has a tendency to come in right after other companies have developed some important basic technology and then snag away the market from them. They did that with GUIs, MP3 players, and now high-powered smartphones.

Dell does cheap products in established markets long after others have recouped their R&D investments. Dell doesn't do the end run around innovators that Apple does.

Sorry, I'm a Linux user, not a Mac user.

Well, something rotted your brain.

Lemme guess, you also think we should all start paying giant royalties to Xerox Corp. for all their research work done at PARC, which are the basis of much of what we do with computers (including windowing interfaces), even though Xerox was stupid and basically gave away all their research and didn't capitalize on it?

Xerox did get plenty of royalties, including from Apple, and their research paid off for them. They didn't manage to launch their own successful product line, but Xerox has never been able to sell anything other than copiers and printers anyway.

Furthermore, much of the work on the GUI came from academia not from Xerox; Xerox was the place that put it together successfully for the first time. Xerox has effectively given back for what they took to the research community, which is the way it should work.

I don't know whether Apple should pay royalties, that's for a judge to decide. I do think that Apple should start a research lab again, and that they should become less ruthless. Their current strategy is working in the short term, but it's going to fail in the long term; even if Jobs can keep pulling it off, he's going to be gone at some point.

What's your long term vision for Apple?

Re:Apple Counter files against Nokia not files

[E IS mC(Square)]

By using Nokia's know-how, and giving us iphone?

Re:Apple Counter files against Nokia not files

[Grishnakh]

Who says Nokia has failed? Nokia is a huge phone manufacturer and they still have most of the market. The iPhone is still an overpriced niche product with some serious problems. And it remains to be seen whether Apple will be able to remain a player in this market.

Sorry, but here in the USA, I don't see many people with Nokias. They seem to be a bit player here. However, everyone and his brother seems to have an iPhone, or one of the new Android phones.

We're talking about a lawsuit between Nokia and Apple here, and we're talking about whether Nokia or Apple has the more credible and defensible case to having invented important smart phone technologies.

No, that's what the overall article is about, but down deep in the discussion here, I'm just seeing a lot of Apple-bashing for "stealing other peoples' technologies", "not contributing enough", etc. A typical Slashdot article can have hundreds or even over 1000 comments; not all of them are directly on-topic, and stray somewhat. I'm not addressing the Nokia vs. Apple lawsuit, I'm only addressing this insane idea that Apple "doesn't do enough research" that some posters here are pushing.

Apple has a tendency to come in right after other companies have developed some important basic technology and then snag away the market from them. They did that with GUIs, MP3 players, and now high-powered smartphones.

There you go again, with this idea that Apple is somehow "stealing" a market away from a bunch of morons who couldn't produce a decent product. It's not Apple's fault that other companies tried to make MP3 players and smartphones, and their efforts were crap. Heck, MS has been making smartphone OSes for quite a while now, and they've always sucked (like everything MS does). Suddenly, Apple tries their hand at it and everyone loves it. You think that's "stealing"? No, that's simple business: make a better mousetrap.

You sound like one of these retards that thinks patents should cover extremely vague ideas and be perpetual.

I don't know whether Apple should pay royalties, that's for a judge to decide. I do think that Apple should start a research lab again, and that they should become less ruthless. Their current strategy is working in the short term, but it's going to fail in the long term; even if Jobs can keep pulling it off, he's going to be gone at some point.

What's your long term vision for Apple?

I don't have one, because I really don't care that much. I just know that what they've been doing for the last decade has been working out quite well for them financially, and what they were doing before Jobs took over was a complete disaster. When someone is successful, without having to have a monopoly to take advantage of, I'm not going to take it upon myself to criticize their business strategy, because they obviously know what they're doing. No one's forcing me to buy their products (again, Apple doesn't have anything remotely close to a monopoly), so if I don't like their actions, I'll go elsewhere.

Re:Apple Counter files against Nokia not files

[pydev]

Sorry, but here in the USA, I don't see many people with Nokias.

Nokia was failing in the US market long before iPhone. The iPhone is no more a threat to Nokia than OS X is a threat to Microsoft. The reason Nokia is in trouble is because of Android and HTC.

There you go again, with this idea that Apple is somehow "stealing" a market away from a bunch of morons who couldn't produce a decent product. It's not Apple's fault that other companies tried to make MP3 players and smartphones, and their efforts were crap.

But that's not what happened. The original MacOS was a piece of crap, but Jobs made it look pretty, made it cheap to produce, and got it to market a year or two before other systems by cutting corners everywhere. Both Apple and the industry suffered for a decade from the consequences.

Suddenly, Apple tries their hand at it and everyone loves it.

Apple's phone market share is 1%, their desktop market share is 3%. How does that translate into "everyone" loving it? Nokia's worldwide market share is 39%, for the simple reason that most people in the world want a cheap phone with a long battery life.

You think that's "stealing"?

No, but I think it is dishonest of you to wrongly attribute quotes to me.

No, that's simple business: make a better mousetrap.

Macs sell because people like the brand and the design, not because of better technology. It's the same reason BMW and Nike sell. Often, there's nothing wrong with that. I'll get another iMac and another Nano. But sometimes there is, like with MacOS and iPhone.

Re:Apple Counter files against Nokia not files

[Grishnakh]

But that's not what happened. The original MacOS was a piece of crap, but Jobs made it look pretty, made it cheap to produce, and got it to market a year or two before other systems by cutting corners everywhere. Both Apple and the industry suffered for a decade from the consequences.

Huh? MacOS was fine back in the 80s, when its only competition was MS-DOS which wasn't even an OS. Even into the 90s, it was still arguably better than Windows; Win3.1 was cooperative multitasking just like MacOS. Yeah, it sucked compared to what we have now, but at the time it's not like there were any other low-end computers (besides Amiga perhaps) with preemptive multitasking and full memory protection.

But yes, more recently (circa 2001), it was crap compared to all the competition, which is why they made OS X. But remember, during that time in the 90s when MacOS sucked donkey balls, Apple was run by numbskulls like Sculley. This isn't Jobs' fault; he wasn't around at that time, and faulting him for MacOS being crappy (compared to modern OSes) way way back in 1984 is utterly ridiculous. At the time, MacOS was way, way ahead of everything else for graphical interfaces. If Apple couldn't keep up their technological lead after Jobs left and they installed a moron as CEO, that's not Jobs' fault. After Jobs took over, he had them make OS X to fix the crappy-OS problem, and now no one complains about it, because it's not an issue.

The fundamental lesson here is: good management = successful company, bad management = unsuccessful company.

You think that's "stealing"?
No, but I think it is dishonest of you to wrongly attribute quotes to me.

Here's exactly what you wrote:
Apple has a tendency to come in right after other companies have developed some important basic technology and then snag away the market from them. They did that with GUIs, MP3 players, and now high-powered smartphones.

And my response:
There you go again, with this idea that Apple is somehow "stealing" a market away from a bunch of morons who couldn't produce a decent product.

You're implying that they're somehow "stealing" (not in the strictly legal sense obviously) the market. No, they're just making better business decisions. Let's assume for argument that IBM was still making PCs; why would I want to buy a computer from them, just because they developed the first PCs, when I can get much better and cheaper computers from competitors? (Back in 1990, this would have made a lot of sense, as IBM was hawking their crappy, overpriced PS/2s with completely incompatible parts, and everyone else was selling industry-standard "clones".)

Macs sell because people like the brand and the design, not because of better technology. It's the same reason BMW and Nike sell.

When talking about user interfaces, the design IS the technology. Something that's really fast isn't very useful if it takes forever to figure out how to use, is awkward, etc. As for Apple technology, when you buy a Mac, you don't have to worry about wasting CPU cycles on antivirus software, or worry about ever catching viruses. I'd say their technology is way ahead of Microsoft's.

But sometimes there is, like with MacOS and iPhone.

MacOS (pre-X) is long gone. OS X is far superior to Windows (though I obviously prefer Linux, but I don't presume to think that it's a solution fit for everyone). iPhone is a far better smartphone than any crappy WinMo/Crackberry phone, though I can't really say how it compares to Android as I haven't tried one of those yet (I have read in another Slashdot article that the accuracy of the touchscreen software is lacking on Android phones however).

Re:Apple Counter files against Nokia not files

[pydev]

Huh? MacOS was fine back in the 80s, when its only competition was MS-DOS which wasn't even an OS.

MacOS was never "fine"; it was a crappy design from the ground up because Apple tried to fit a GUI into a 128k ROM. That allowed them to beat everybody else to market by a year or two. Jobs was ousted before he had to deal with the mess he created.

Xerox already had two high quality software platforms, including Smalltalk-80, which Objective-C and Cocoa were eventually modeled on. Amiga came out a year later with a high performance multitasking OS and hardware graphics acceleration.

You're implying that they're somehow "stealing" (not in the strictly legal sense obviously) the market.

When you put things in quotes that you attribute to other people, you're implying that they said this literally, and that is dishonest of you.

No, they're just making better business decisions.

No contradiction there: taking other people's ideas, cutting corners, and beating companies in a rush to market can be the better business decision. Of course, Apple can only do that because Jobs runs the company with an iron fist and keeps picking winners. How's that gonna work post-Jobs?

And despite what you are accusing me of, I don't hate everything Apple does. I own a Mac. I think it's a nice design. I think OS X is decent OS, although it's showing its age (in another half dozen years, Apple may have another MacOS problem on their hands).

When talking about user interfaces, the design IS the technology. Something that's really fast isn't very useful if it takes forever to figure out how to use, is awkward,

Yeah? And where's the evidence that Apple's machines are actually easier to use? They clearly are more fun to use and they are clearly easier to purchase. But that's not the same as demonstrably better usability.

MacOS (pre-X) is long gone.

But iPhone is not.

OS X is far superior to Windows

No, not really. Technology-wise or in terms of user interface, there's little difference between OS X, Linux, and Windows these days.

(I have read in another Slashdot article that the accuracy of the touchscreen software is lacking on Android phones however).

Just like before, you're jumping to conclusions on very little data. That was a single informal experiment by a computer magazine using one user drawing lines on a screen. That has no obvious relevance to regular smartphone usage.

Apple is flying high right now because of the way it's set up around Jobs. It's great while it lasts, but it's not a feasible long term strategy.

Re:Apple Counter files against Nokia not files

[alexo]

I am with Nokia on this issue, but don't make the mistake of thinking they are good guys.

Where big (especially multinational) corporations are involved, there are no good guys.

Re:Apple Counter files against Nokia not files

[Uberbah]

Because Nokia licenses their patents under RAND terms (Reasonable And Non-Discriminatory, iirc). Charging or demanding more from Apple than other phone manufacturers would possibly violate those terms.

Worthless patents

[Darkness404]

When will the US patent system be reformed? The patents that the article references are

The 10 patents it accuses Apple of violating are related to making phones able to run on GSM, 3G, and Wi-Fi networks

which sounds like a trivial thing to patent to begin with. How again are patents really contributing to the general good?

Re:Worthless patents

[mjwx]

which sounds like a trivial thing to patent to begin with. How again are patents really contributing to the general good?

Because patents actually do spur innovation and research. The US patent system is broken, do not assume that patents are useless because people use them wrong. It's like saying a car is useless because some people cant drive properly. Nokia is at the forefront of cellular hardware R&D, they are hardly the patent trolls Apple fanboys are making them out to be.

Re:Worthless patents

[Anonymous Coward]

How do patents contribute to innovation? Do you believe that a patent-less society would be less innovative?

Re:Worthless patents

[ThrowAwaySociety]

Nokia is at the forefront of cellular hardware R&D, they are hardly the patent trolls Apple fanboys are making them out to be.

Nobody is accusing Nokia of being a patent troll. Everybody knows that Nokia is an actual company that does actually sell products.

Nokia's alleged abuse of patent law comes from them trying to charge Apple more than the going rate that it charges to Motorola or Samsung or RIM for the same tech. That's just anti-competitive, plain and simple.

Re:Worthless patents

[siride]

The idea behind patents is that you will release the knowledge behind your product or design to the public ("patent", being the opposite of "latent" means something along the lines of "out in the open") in exchange for a temporary monopoly during which time you can recoup the costs of development. Taking the risk of developing a new technology is thus incentivized because you can be assured that your product won't be ripped off and sold for cheap, preventing you from making any profit (or just breaking even) off of what could have been a potentially expensive period of R&D beforehand. That's why it makes sense to have patents.

It doesn't make sense to patent trivial things, or have patents that take a long time to expire. These squash innovation because they prevent *others* from using new technologies to make even newer technologies. There has to be a balance between slowing innovation slightly and making sure that innovation is not a huge risk.

Re:Worthless patents

[Anonymous Coward]

Nokia wants the patents for multi touch cross licensed. These patents are even more trivial than GSM, 3G and Wi-Fi. Personally I am with Nokia on this one. I respect the ability to profit from being first with multi touch. However I cannot believe it is possible for Apple to sit on these patents without licensing them to anyone.
I am with Nokia on this one and I hope it forces Apple to cross license some of its more obvious patents.

Re:Worthless patents

[increment1]

Charging one entity more than another is not anti-competitive behavior.

For reference of what is actual anti-competitive behavior, see here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-competitive_practices

Companies usually only resort to patent warfare when they are otherwise doing poorly. Additionally, in some sense, Nokia is duty bound to pursue their patents against Apple in order to maximize shareholder value.

Re:Worthless patents

[Anonymous Coward]

Thing is, most innovation involved in electronics and software is trivial. I can, accidentally, stumble upon dozens of patents just by spending a weekend developing a mobile phone application. Patents should legitimately require non-obviousness, and the main way of ensuring that is by banning software patents. There are so very, very few legitimately non-obvious software patents that discarding them will do no harm -- those companies can rely on trade secret laws to maintain the secretive nature, or, in extremely rare cases of legitimate usefulness, require licensing agreements to be signed before the full details of the technology are made known to select persons or companies.

Re:Worthless patents

[Anonymous Coward]

More than likely the percentage talks broke down and they are taking it to court. Nokia just went thru this with another big cell player Qualcomm (who nokia accused of charging more than the going rate). It has nothing to do with one or the other using the other inventions. It is just about money. They settled with qualcomm for a big chunk of money going to qualcomm. Which means 'we could go to court and drag it out for years but would loose in the end'.

Apple is playing a shaky game. As Nokia is one of the 800 pound gorillas in that market. It sounds like Apple is trying to get a 'favored' status rate. These guys will not do that as it ends up costing them with other people they charge. They have things in the contracts like 'if someone else gets a lower rate you get the same rate'. Nokia will fight tooth and nail not to go below a certain rate. This magic number is never said outside of boardrooms but everyone knows who is paying what anyway...

Re:Worthless patents

[zsimic]

How do patents spur innovation? Care to elaborate?

Re:Worthless patents

[WCguru42]

Nokia wants the patents for multi touch cross licensed. These patents are even more trivial than GSM, 3G and Wi-Fi.

Really. They may be trivial to implement now because others have done the work to produce them, but designing the transmitter and logic board to accurately connect a cell phone to a cellular network is not trivial. Neither is a multitouch capacitive screen. Go design something and when I copy your design scheme or buy a prefab piece of equipment don't come whining when I call the implementation trivial.

Re:Worthless patents

[beelsebob]

Nope, it's not anti-competitive. What it is though, is in violation of RAND terms, which nokia signed up to when they let their patents become part of the GSM standard.

Re:Worthless patents

[beelsebob]

1) If nokia is an 800lb gorilla, Apple is King Kong – Nokia's market cap is $50bn, apple's is $190bn.
2) Apple isn't trying to get favoured rates, they're trying to get the same rates as everyone else as dictated by RAND terms.

Re:Worthless patents

[melikamp]

Which brings up a question of how to measure innovation objectively. Should one count inventions per year (what is an "invention")? Products per year? And then there are other factors, some of which can easily make the impact of patents insignificant. A war, an economic crisis, an ecological disaster, or a bad educational system may slow down the research or halt it altogether. An easy access to natural resources, the main one being energy, or a political system which protects free speech will probably greatly increase the rate of innovation. If one cannot adequately measure how the rate of innovation changes with respect to the patent term, then there can be no rational argument for having a patent system at all, since the costs are real and can be calculated directly.

Re:Worthless patents

[sopssa]

The issue is about a lot more than just about GSM standards. Among others, theres patents about usability and interfaces, not just about GSM.

Re:Worthless patents

[melikamp]

The proper questions are "by how much?" and "what is the benefit to consumer, in dollars?", and the answer better include some sound statistics.

Re:Worthless patents

[The End Of Days]

You could stumble on these things now, certainly. Somebody already put in the hard work to make them possible, then easy.

The second time you do something, it's obvious. The first time, not so much. Antipatent people seem to forget that.

Re:Worthless patents

[R3d M3rcury]

If nokia is an 800lb gorilla, Apple is King Kong – Nokia's market cap is $50bn, apple's is $190bn.

True. But when it comes to phones, Nokia is the 800lb gorilla and Apple is Zippy the Chimp.

Why do I say this?

Nokia can conceivably stop Apple from selling a GSM phone, if they are successful. Apple will have to change the iPhone to run on CDMA networks, such as Verizon's here in the US. But the world-wide market for GSM phones is much larger than the market for CDMA phones. This will limit how well iPhones will sell outside of the US and hurt Apple's revenue dramatically.

In short, Nokia can do a fair amount of damage to iPhone sales.

In return, what can Apple do to Nokia? Stop them from selling phones? I doubt it. Nokia sells plenty of different kinds of phones. They may be able to lop off the top-end phones, but that's about it. I also assume Nokia makes plenty of money off of their patents, so Nokia wouldn't be hurt too badly if Apple stopped them from selling the N97. So if Apple prevails, Nokia may have to make some minor changes to their products, but that's about it.

That's why Nokia is the 800LB Gorilla.

That said, much like Apple licensing the Mac UI to Microsoft, Nokia's "mistake" was agreeing to RAND terms.

Re:Worthless patents

[icsx]

Well, think of it this way:

You invent something, patent it and you can license your invention to others and thus gain money. If you do not have chances to do a patent, as soon as you publish what you did, others will copy your invention and you actually lose more money than you could have gained in the first place.

This here actually encourages people to do something that they can get paid from. Without patents, you can still be excited but as soon as the thing goes out of the pipeline, your out of the game. Others step in and thats not fun.

Re:Worthless patents

[Uberbah]

That's why Nokia is the 800LB Gorilla.

Not when your "Zibby the Chimp" has enough cash on hand to buy a controlling interest Nokia and fire the gorilla.

Re:Worthless patents

[Jafafa Hots]

Producing a multitouch capacitive screen may not be trivial, but CONCEIVING of one is, and that's all it takes to get a patent.

Patents are not awarded for manufacturing capabilities you've achieved, they're awarded for ideas you've had.

Re:Worthless patents

[LS]

Yeah but the people patenting a specific technology usually aren't the same people that put in the hard work to make that specific technology possible - all that hard work is actually an ecosystem of countless technologies to create an environment for that one further step forward. And most of the truly foundational work was done by governments and universities that didn't patent their work (at least until recently, because of patent trolls such as yourself).

Re:Worthless patents

[icsx]

This is not a case where a company is doing poorly not it is Nokia's duty really to pursue this matter. However, it's in their best interests as if you do not defend your patents, you could lose them completely.

Re:Worthless patents

[icsx]

Make that happen and i'll high five you. I dare you.

Re:Worthless patents

[Anonymous Coward]

The 10 patents it accuses Apple of violating are related to making phones able to run on GSM, 3G, and Wi-Fi networks

which sounds like a trivial thing to patent to begin with. How again are patents really contributing to the general good?

Trivial? Wow? You realize Nokia originally developed all this technology. You wouldn't have mobile phones without Nokia today.

Re:Worthless patents

[Anonymous Coward]

The only loser in that situation would be the chimp who would be left almost broke with negligible ROI, if they fire the gorilla. The fired gorilla walks away with a wad of cash.

Of course in the real world, no company is stupid enough to buyout an almost equally sized company over a bunch of patents that could be settled for pocket change.

Re:Worthless patents

[pclminion]

Innovations per person-year. One person, working for one year, to produce one innovation, is a single "point." This accurately reflects the costs of employing multiple inventors and also the time it takes to produce the innovation.

Using this as a baseline for calculation, you can compute revenue per share per innovation point, which, for a privately held company, is proportional to revenue / employees / ( innovation / employee / year ) == revenue * year / innovation. Assuming that a year's worth of development is roughly equivalent between companies, this means that what you are looking for is the amount of revenue per innovation. On its face, this seems to imply that longer patent terms are preferable since they maximize the revenue derived from each innovation before competition intervenes. Some other argument is necessary to show that shorter patent terms are beneficial to the inventors. For the inventors, fiscally, it's really hard to make a case for shorter patent terms.

The social benefit of innovation is a different story, which can't be so easily encoded in a simple equation. I think we need to look to countries where, on the whole, inventor satisfaction and public satisfaction are both in a reasonable balance, and emulate whatever that system happens to be. There's just no way to define it any more concretely than that.

Re:Worthless patents

[Znork]

That's why it makes sense to have patents.

Eh, no, that's just the patents proponents theory.

Developing new technology always carries an incentive in and of itself, as it (presumably) cuts costs or offers desirable features, thus spurring revenue. The fact that it'll get ripped off is irrelevant; either you do it, or someone else does it and your product won't get sold as it's always a step behind. As long as you keep release cycles short enough and matched with R&D you recoup your investment through first mover advantage.

Granting patents on top of the first mover advantage merely slows development down; if you don't have to innovate to keep ahead of the competition, then why bother? Much more comfortable to sit back and collect royalties.

That's why it doesn't make sense to have patents.

So there you have two theories. In the absence of empirical evidence, and as long as you believe free market competition is the most efficient market, mine wins on basis of least interference.

So, have any actual empirical evidence to back up the theory that we get more innovation from lack of competition? Most economic growth does not seem to be dependent on IPR enforcement, and in fact current rates around the world seem to indicate the opposite.

Re:Worthless patents

[pclminion]

Regardless of this particular tissy, the idea that Apple would be interested in owning any significant portion of Nokia is laughable. Unless the iPhone starts making up an ENORMOUS chunk of their business, it just isn't explainable to the shareholders why Apple, a computer company ever since its inception, has become a major owner of a company whose purpose is the manufacturing of a wide variety of wireless phones. It doesn't make sense (although it could in the future, I don't think we're anywhere near that at this point)

Re:Worthless patents

[Anonymous Coward]

You do realize Apple are now "Apple, Inc.", not "Apple Computer, Inc."?

Re:Worthless patents

[zoney_ie]

Despite the best efforts of the UK, there is actually some regulation of that kind of thing here in Europe.

Re:Worthless patents

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think Apple designed the screen? I think they're from some German company.

Having said that, I work for Nokia so you know my bias.

Re:Worthless patents

[Otis_INF]

Taking the risk of developing a new technology is thus incentivized because you can be assured that your product won't be ripped off and sold for cheap, preventing you from making any profit (or just breaking even) off of what could have been a potentially expensive period of R&D beforehand. That's why it makes sense to have patents

In theory that sounds great. In practice however, the competitor can rip your innovation easily by building it a bit different and patent that too (as it's not 'the same'). The result is 2 patents for practically the same thing. If more competitors do that, we end up with a lot of patents for the same thing and nightmares waiting to happen.

In theory the competitors have to license the technology patent by the inventor. In practice they don't want to pay and try to work around it. If by patenting your own 'slightly different' approach is possible, they'll do it.

So in practice what you said is not going to work. True, the inventor likely has more costs than the 'me-too' product producer but they won't gain it back because the competition won't license their tech.

Re:Worthless patents

[beelsebob]

You do realise that over a third of apple's profits are derived from iPhones, almost a second third from iPods, and less than a third from computers?

Re:Worthless patents

[Anonymous Coward]

Developing new technology always carries an incentive in and of itself, as it (presumably) cuts costs or offers desirable features, thus spurring revenue. The fact that it'll get ripped off is irrelevant; either you do it, or someone else does it and your product won't get sold as it's always a step behind. As long as you keep release cycles short enough and matched with R&D you recoup your investment through first mover advantage.

That is only true for technology that is cheap to develop. Technology that cost really much to develop, can be relatively cheap to reverse engineer. This is definitively true for medicins.

If there were no patents on medicin, the one creating the medicin would have only a few months to recoup costs, before identical copies were sold, much cheaper.

Granting patents on top of the first mover advantage merely slows development down; if you don't have to innovate to keep ahead of the competition, then why bother? Much more comfortable to sit back and collect royalties.

The problem with that, is that in many fields, development is so quick that there is just a short period of time to collect royalties. Check the timespan between VHS and DVD, and the timespan between DVD and blueray.

The incentive a company not holding the patent for the current technology has, is to be the one collecting royalties and not the one paying royalties on the next technology.

The incentive on the company holding the current patent is not as big, but they to want to collect the royalties on the next technology.

That's why it doesn't make sense to have patents.

In which you are wrong. There is a good reason for having a patent system. That said, there are many problems with the ways things are, and not necessarily because of the patent system in it self.

1 Patent lawyers granting patents for technology that shouldn't be patentable. Not a problem with the patent system, but with the people working with the patent system.

2 Patent trolls. In many cases, companies who don't produce anything, but holding plenty of patents. Acting as maffia. Partly a problem with the patent system, partly a problem with other things. Changing the patent system, so that a patent is only valid, as long as it is used would fix a large part of the problem.

3 Patent system only protects large companies and only hits on small companies. A problem with the legal system in general. In this case, there are two major companies. This will settle with minor costs to the loser, thus not making it a risk to violate patents. Cross licensing will occure in the end.

The small companies can't afford to violate a patent on the other hand, it also can't afford to defend a patent either. The only reasons for a small company to get a patent, is to make sure that they themeself can continue to produce their invention without being sued and to collect royalties from small enough companies and honest enough large companies.

Re:Worthless patents

[Eunuchswear]

More proof that slashdot moderators are insane. The comment:

[making phones able to run on GSM, 3G, and Wi-Fi] sounds like a trivial thing

gets modded "insightful". WTF!

Re:Worthless patents

[Eunuchswear]

Apple have, of course, not patented "multitouch" or "capacitive screens". They have patented "Touch screen device, method, and graphical user interface for determining commands by applying heuristics".

It's all about the heuristics. See http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2009/02/13/the-iphone-multitouch-patent-myth/ for a reasonable description.

Re:Worthless patents

[olderchurch]

It's like saying a car is useless because most people cant drive properly.

Fixed that for you

Re:Worthless patents

[Reemi]

Problem is, Nokia holds patents on CDMA and general phone concepts as well. No way Apple will be able to sell a CDMA phone without licensing Nokia IPR.

In fact, this fight is not over only the mentioned 10 patents, but covers hundreds of patents. But due to the cost of fighting about all patents, a few key ones are selected for the legal fight. This is standard practice.

Apple has no choice other then creating a licensing agreement with Nokia or leave the market.

Some mentioned 'fair' agreement. Problem is, how much is the value of your patent portfolio. Take for example Ericsson, they hold key patents in cellular technology. 10 of their patents have more value for Nokia then 10 of Apple patents. Apple patents do not apply to e.g. their low end, PC-card/module and network product. (Assuming here Apple patents are in majority covering the field of UI)

Re:Worthless patents

[U96]

Cool. A patent troll "troll"

Re:Worthless patents

[Hognoxious]

Developing new technology always carries an incentive in and of itself, as it (presumably) cuts costs or offers desirable features, thus spurring revenue.

The question is, whose revenue? Whoever did the R&D, or the rip-off artist?

Re:Worthless patents

[gnupun]

How do patents spur innovation?

And why should people innovate to benefit people like you? Are they your slaves who are obligated to expend their life's efforts to improve your lives while receiving little or nothing in return? No, instead they have the freedom and the right to help others or help themselves. People who only want to help others write free software. People who want to help others and help themselves protect their work from theft using patents.

Re:Worthless patents

[Anonymous Coward]

However, it's in their best interests as if you do not defend your patents, you could lose them completely.

Wrong. Petents != trademarks.

Re:Worthless patents

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

The fact that it'll get ripped off is irrelevant; either you do it, or someone else does it and your product won't get sold as it's always a step behind....

You'd have a point of R&D were free.

Re:Worthless patents

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

In practice however, the competitor can rip your innovation easily by building it a bit different...

Yeah... they innovate. Heh.

Re:Worthless patents

[Anonymous Coward]

First, I'm not siding with anyone on this, just commenting on the proposed course of action.

Not when your "Zibby the Chimp" has enough cash on hand to buy a controlling interest Nokia and fire the gorilla.

That seems like it would likely benefit Nokia shareholders at least as much as higher terms. Plus, I was under the impression that having a majority interest did not allow you to force things that harm the other shareholders, so they would need to complete a hostile takeover to force the executives to pass over a valuable revenue line.

Re:Worthless patents

[DMiax]

Market cap is meaningless in this case. It is how much investors would put in Apple/Nokia for a new financial/industrial move. Apple has a very high return rate: they rarely get a product wrong lately. But the investors will not cover the same amount for legal battles, because there is no return, just survival. In that respect Nokia has more cash than Apple.

Re:Worthless patents

[DMiax]

It is a violation if
1) it is true;
2) Apple contacted Nokia before selling the phone.
And even in this case they should have brought to court immediately, not now.

Re:Worthless patents

[CptPicard]

"Trivial"? How exactly? They are actual, real, physical hardware patents that were developed when the industry was in its infancy just so that there is a cellphone to begin with! Nokia and Ericsson pretty much created the technological fundamentals, and now people are willing to take them for granted... most importantly, the engineering stuff that goes into this is actually far more challenging in a lot of ways than anything on the software side (I very much dislike software patents like most here...)

Re:Worthless patents

[CptPicard]

These patents are even more trivial than GSM, 3G and Wi-Fi

Care to explain how these patents are trivial? I would say that they are the most central patents you can imagine in the field...

Re:Worthless patents

[ThosLives]

This incorrectly assumes "all innovations are equal." Which they are surely not. Anything related simply to [i]quantity[/i] without considering [i]quality[/i] is, in my opinion, a very bad metric for innovation.

Re:Worthless patents

[Anonymous Coward]

Saying it's hard to judge an objective measure is a far reach from concluding that therefore the measured must be useless.

Re:Worthless patents

[Kyusaku Natsume]

Aside from that, Nokia is being trollish when they are stating that not only the iPhone -that any reasonable person would be lead to believe that could be infringing Nokia's patents and that Apple must pay Nokia a reasonable amount from Nokia's POV for the license to use key cell phone technology- but also the iPod and Apple computers are infringing Nokia's IP. That weakens Nokia's case, aside from the fact that after the iPhone, all phone manufacturers rushed to do iPhone look-alikes or "iPhone killers", including Nokia. As a happy owner of products from both companies, I only wish that this litigation doesn't end hurting consumers.

Re:Worthless patents

[Tuntematon]

Nope, it's not anti-competitive. What it is though, is in violation of RAND terms, which nokia signed up to when they let their patents become part of the GSM standard.

Well you don't know that, because you don't know how others have licensed those patents. Or what Apple was willing to pay. If you do please tell me.

I think Apple was willing to pay something and that something wasn't enough, or was in other ways conflicting what others pay for the same thing.

Re:Worthless patents

[dunkelfalke]

No, it is not a violation of RAND terms since Apple is not a member of the GSM association.

Re:Worthless patents

[Tuntematon]

2) Apple isn't trying to get favoured rates, they're trying to get the same rates as everyone else as dictated by RAND terms.

Please quote some other source than Apple for this...

Re:Worthless patents

[jo_ham]

At worst? Buy/merge with Nokia.

Unlikely and unpleasant for all concerned, but forceable. Alternatively and much more likely if Apple simply does not want to play ball is the withdrawal of the iPhone, in much the same way as MS did with Office. MS are obviously going to bring Office back after the patent-infringing material is removed, and potentially Apple would do the same (since the iPhone is a clear money spinner) by either going CDMA only, or releasing some sort of phone that requires a n add-in chip to enable GSM function that can be bought from a third party supplier.

There are always ways around it - the most convenient being to pay whatever Nokia is asking (including licencing other patents unrelated to phones), which they are clearly hoping Apple will do rather than take a major pain in the butt and revenue hit by having to drastically change the iPhone or stop selling it for a certain time frame.

Re:Worthless patents

[cynyr]

It could be that Motorola or Samsung or RIM had more to offer of interest to Nokia in way of cross licensed patents. Nokia would then take the "cost of a liscense" = "Fee" - "Value of cross licensed patents". See how if apples "Value of cross licensed patents" is less they pay more in money?

Re:Worthless patents

[cynyr]

they may be getting the same rate, just that you can use cross licensed patents to pay some of that "fee". Now does apple have anything that nokia would like? is it the same amount as say Motorola who have some chip design under their belt? or RIM? or XXXX? Most of apples patents seem to be on the UI or layout of the device, maybe "touchscreen only phone". Nokia may feel that these are not worth as much as some of the ones they've gotten other places, and thus feel there is little value there, and the "cash" fee portion is higher to reflect that. That would seem to not be against RAND. it's still the same "price", just the payment methods are different.

Re:Worthless patents

[Anonymous Coward]

Problem is, Nokia holds patents on CDMA and general phone concepts as well. No way Apple will be able to sell a CDMA phone without licensing Nokia IPR.

In fact, this fight is not over only the mentioned 10 patents, but covers hundreds of patents. But due to the cost of fighting about all patents, a few key ones are selected for the legal fight. This is standard practice.

Apple has no choice other then creating a licensing agreement with Nokia or leave the market.

Some mentioned 'fair' agreement. Problem is, how much is the value of your patent portfolio. Take for example Ericsson, they hold key patents in cellular technology. 10 of their patents have more value for Nokia then 10 of Apple patents. Apple patents do not apply to e.g. their low end, PC-card/module and network product. (Assuming here Apple patents are in majority covering the field of UI)

Apple could just switch the iPhone to wifi-only connections in a quiet OS update. If they followed it up with the Mac guy telling us that the flexibility of phone networks just results in low reliability and a chaotic environment, enough of us would get enthused about the iWifi Experience to Think Different.

Re:Worthless patents

[beelsebob]

It has been stated by both sides that Nokia asked from Apple three times the value they'd asked from other licensees, and a patent sharing agreement that the other licensees hadn't been made to enter.

Re:Worthless patents

[beelsebob]

RAND terms don't require Apple to be a member of the GSM association, they require Apple to be attempting to implement the GSM standard. I think you'd have a pretty tough time trying to argue that they're not trying to do that.

Re:Worthless patents

[beelsebob]

I would bet heavily that the *real* reason that Nokia is suing now is to do with the fact that they want their hands on Apple's patents – after all, that's what apple disputes about the RAND terms, nokia asked for patents, which they haven't asked for from other companies (along with asking 3 times more money than they asked for from any other company).

I would bet heavily that Nokia is seeing apple taking a decisive lead in phone UIs with multitouch, and that they want to be able to compete in that market.

Re:Worthless patents

[Anonymous Coward]

If one cannot adequately measure how the rate of innovation changes with respect to the
patent term, then there can be no rational argument for having a patent system at all...

Just because you can't give an exact measure doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

Re:Worthless patents

[Anonymous Coward]

They know how much the patents are worth, there's a certain "barter" value when they decide which patents to throw in to a cross licensing deal. You could put together a barter club and exchange goods and services with other barterers, and since there's no money involved, it's not taxable. Oh, wait, it is.
Why don't these companies trading in very valuable patents pay taxes on their bartering? I wouldn't mind if they chose the taxable value of their patent trading, if that choice also determined the damages for infringement.

Re:Worthless patents

[Tuntematon]

It has been stated by both sides that Nokia asked from Apple three times the value they'd asked from other licensees, and a patent sharing agreement that the other licensees hadn't been made to enter.

Sorry, I haven't seen that. I thought the contracts between manufacturers were secret.

Re:Worthless patents

[Tuntematon]

along with asking 3 times more money than they asked for from any other company

Maybe because iPhone is 3 times more expensive that other phones overall. Also because they started to sell iPhone without paying anything.

Re:Worthless patents

[arose]

Apple has an 8th of their market cap in cash and then enough to cover their costs if they spend it? I don't think even Apple fanboys can overspend that much.

Re:Worthless patents

[Svartalf]

Then they're barely at the threshold of being something to remotely consider for them...

If I were a Shareholder, and they pulled that, I'd be screaming for BoD heads and executive management's as well if they did something stupid like that, though.

There's not enough justification to spend 1/3rd your net worth on a company 1/3rd your net worth just to protect 1/3rd of your revenues (which are smaller than the amounts in question, mind...) when you could have the rights to not worry about it in the big-picture sense for vastly less money. That's not business, that's just egos talking at that point if they were to buy out Nokia.

Re:Worthless patents

[Svartalf]

Apple could just switch the iPhone to wifi-only connections in a quiet OS update. If they followed it up with the Mac guy telling us that the flexibility of phone networks just results in low reliability and a chaotic environment, enough of us would get enthused about the iWifi Experience to Think Different.

Riiight. If they did that, iPhones would become very less useful to people- it just becomes an overglorified iPod at that point. Keep in mind, there's some mention of WiFi related patents being touched upon as well- that might not even be a bolt-hole for the phones. The iPhone is actually at risk right at the moment- and until you find out what the terms precisely were, you can't know if Nokia's being obnoxious or Apple is (though I'm suspecting Apple's being moreso than Nokia...).

Re:Worthless patents

[pclminion]

Only a third? That's even less than I was thinking. They certainly have no way of justifying the purchase of a wireless phone manufacturer. Thanks for enhancing my point for me.

Re:Worthless patents

[Svartalf]

At worst? Buy/merge with Nokia.

You know... People keep bandying that about with abandon. It's unlikely to happen- ever.

1) Buying out means spending roughly 1/3rd their net worth on a company that only provides 1/3rd your income. An income that is less than the money you just spent.

2) Buying out means spending money on a company that's only sort-of related to some of your income and your lines of business (This is the reality there... Apple's still more of a computer company than a phone company...)- they're publicly traded, which translates into a SERIOUS hit to share value because of that stunt if they were to attempt it.

3) I'm sure they'd have some scrutiny from the EU or the FTC over it in the first place, esp. after this pitched filings fight we've seen here.

No, it's unlikely to happen and I wish that people would quit thinking solely in terms of market cap values and saying "well, they'll just buy them out". That doesn't happen all too often and more often than not it ends up having regulatory problems along the way when it does.

Re:Worthless patents

[jo_ham]

That's why I followed it up with the paragraph right after the quoted bit. I know that it is never likely to happen and is difficult and painful to pull off.

Re:Worthless patents

[ifwm]

"RAND terms don't require Apple to be a member of the GSM association"

Yes, actually they do.

You are wrong.

Re:Worthless patents

[Dtyst]

> 2) Apple isn't trying to get favoured rates, they're trying to get the same rates as everyone else as dictated by RAND terms. Well why doesn't Apple join RAND then first? You have to be member to get RAND prices. Why should apple get the benefits without being a member?

Re:Worthless patents

[sznupi]

Or it just shows that Nokia turned a blank eye on that other patents regarding radio technology which are used in other Apple products; but when situation changes, when somebody builds whole product line around R&D spanning three decades and costing billions, that changes the situation...

BTW, look up Maemo tablets; quite an "iPhone lookalikes", launched before any news regarding iPhone surfaced. Too bad they weren't given GSM module, probably due to internal infighting between divisions. But they are the direct inspiration for N900, not iPhone.

Re:Worthless patents

[sznupi]

Repeating what Apple claims might not be very helpful as far us understanding the case goes...

Anyways, look at it from this point of view: so Apple wants to stop Nokia from competing in multitouch UIs by not allowing the usage of multitouch patents. Well...then in response Nokia wants to stop Apple from using radio technology patents without licensing them fairly (on the same terms as all other manufacturers, including cross-licensing in the price estimates)

Re:Worthless patents

[Uberbah]

Nokia's market cap is $47 billion. Apple has $34 billion in liquid assets. I didn't know the Kool Aid drinking Apple haters were this bad at math.

Re:Worthless patents

[CaptainZapp]

Well, the apple.FANBOI-INSTITUTE[tm] deems those patents trivial, thus they are trivial.

next question, please...

Re:Worthless patents

[Uberbah]

Only a third? That's even less than I was thinking. They certainly have no way of justifying the purchase of a wireless phone manufacturer.

"Only" a third? When they make one kind of phone and it's only been out a couple of years?

Thanks for enhancing my point for me.

I suppose you could see it that way, if you were a total moron.

Re:Worthless patents

[cbhacking]

Another poster stated that RAND terms with regard to licensing only apply to RAND members, and that Apple is not a member. If true, this would appear to make Apple's argument invalid; RAND rules don't apply to them, for bettero or worse.

Do you have any response to this?

Re:Worthless patents

[Anonymous Coward]

They are, he's just a fanboy troll and has no idea, ignore him.

Re:Worthless patents

[Daengbo]

The F in FRAND stands for "fair," which mean "not anti-competitive." Non-discriminatory the (ND) doesn't mean "everyone gets the same price." It means "everyone's price is determined in the same manner." Apple doesn't cross-license. You can't compare the terms to rates for businesses that do. As long as the algorithm for determining patent license pricing stays the same, Nokia is doing nothing wrong. Unless you know the algorithm, you can't state "What it is though, is in violation of RAND terms" with any credibility.

Re:Worthless patents

[Daengbo]

I don't think that joining RAND is going to help Apple get competitive prices. (Hint: RAND stands for Reasonable And Non-Discriminatory.) Maybe they should join the GSM Association, instead.

What is wrong with patents

[melikamp]

The summary is a good example of a situation when patents really shine at what they are: a handbrake on innovation. Consumer has nothing to gain if a capable competitor is excluded from the marketplace like that. Leading companies will invest in RnD, patents or not, mostly just to keep up with the state of the art, but also because when (by chance), their engineers invent something truly novel and useful, they will have weeks, months, or may be even years before competitors reverse-engineer their product and learn how to build it cheaper. It is clearly not worth for the public to pay the patent enforcement and monopoly taxes unless the patent law strongly boosts the rate of innovation (and even then, is there really a point?).

And we have no evidence whatsoever that the patent system of any kind increases the rate of innovation (the technological leap of the last 400 years is probably mostly due to the fossil fuels, and we are in for another boost, due to the Internet, the holy Grail of communication). We but we have clear examples of monopolistic behaviors, where the cost to consumer can be directly calculated, like in every case when a cheaper competing product is barred from the market.

The reasonable thing to do would be to start decreasing the patent term, while measuring how it affects the rate of innovation. I would not be surprised to see that it doesn't.

Re:What is wrong with patents

[MichaelSmith]

their engineers invent something truly novel and useful, they will have weeks, months, or may be even years before competitors reverse-engineer their product and learn how to build it cheaper.

But what about the multi touch patent, which this seems to be about. There are a thousand ways it can be implemented, the issue is about detecting two or more fingers on a screen at the same time.

I have a clever way of installing a bell on my bicycle. Should I be able to patent that, because I was the first person to think about it?

Re:What is wrong with patents

[WCguru42]

You must not understand where all the radios in your cell phones were designed. The fact that most companies don't have to think about designing their own radios frees them up to do other things (a la the iPhone).

Re:What is wrong with patents

[The End Of Days]

Actually, being rewarded for being the first to come up with something is what patents are all about. I'm sure you knew that and you were just begging the question, but one can never tell around here. Slashdot is rife with misunderstanding and people who honestly believe that everything someone else did is easy and obvious, as ridiculous as that point of view is.

Re:What is wrong with patents

[AHuxley]

The .coms wanted decades of revenue streams from what was to be short term protection.
They bribed, bought, stole and rigged elections in the US until they got the laws passed and got biology/pharma added too.
The little creative person is shut out. Multinationals seal up an area for their tech for many decades. They then swap amongst their peers and supply fabs.

Re:What is wrong with patents

[Anonymous Coward]

> Actually, being rewarded for being the first to come up with something is what patents are all about

Haha. No. That's one of the lies-to-children that's sometimes trotted out. Patent monopolies are and have always been, since the first letters patent handed out by irredeemably corrupt monarchs, about fighting off free market economic effects that should be making us all better off. Idiots support them because they believe the lie they're about "rewarding innovation", when really they're about subverting and destroying free market capitalism (which is why corporate america, about as capitalist as the soviet union was communist, loves them).

Re:What is wrong with patents

[selven]

And you didn't even address the point about multitouch being obvious beyond saying that the idea is ridiculous. Some patents, like multitouch, ARE overbroad and obvious. Once you have touch interfaces, touching two points at once is an obvious extension of that.

Patents are all about rewarding the first to come up with something and then punishing everyone else.

Apple is just trying not to appear weak

[NimbleSquirrel]

The reality is that, globally, Nokia is the larger company with a larger patent portfolio and has been in business far longer than Apple. Apple may have some key patents, but Nokia certainly have more in relation to mobile phone technology. The first patents at issue were ones necessary for GSM operation: without them, no GSM phone. It seems Apple, for whatever reason (possibly to maintain the secrecy of the iPhone development), decided not to sort out licensing before releasing the iPhone. This could be bad for Apple, if Nokia can prove in court that Apple deliberatly infringed on the patents to get the iPhone to market. Sure, Apple is arguing that license terms were not FRAND (as required by the GSM Association), but disagreement with licensing terms is not an exemption to put a product on the market.

Going to the USITC is simply the next step in this legal tit-for-tat. The seven patents at issue in Nokia's filing to the USITC (involving camera, antenna and power management technology) were different to the original ten patents it sued for in October (involving GSM and wireless technology). Apple countersued in December for thirteen patents. I have yet to see if Apple's USITC filing involes the same thirteen patents. If it does, Apple's USITC filing could be thrown out to avoid a situation of double jeopardy. If it doesn't it would be interesting to see what patents are in Apple's USITC filing.

It seems that Apple is trying to force a settlement out of Nokia, but Apple have for more to lose in this situation. Sure, there is a possibility of a ban on Nokia phones in the US, but most of Nokia's market lies outside the US. It is hard to tell what will happen next, but if a settlement is going to happen it won't be soon. I wouldn't be surprised if Nokia's next step is to take the fight international, with a filing in the EU. I can't help feeling that Apple may come out of this battle worse off.

Re:Apple is just trying not to appear weak

[mab]

Shouldn't the company that produces the GSM chip sets be paying?

Re:Apple is just trying not to appear weak

[Anonymous Coward]

What I find very strange about this whole business is that this is two stories in a row on slashdot where I've seen people say how Nokia is actually the bigger company, and yet Nokia's market cap is less than one-third of Apple's. Does anyone have an explanation for this? Is it something as simple as Nokia shareholders trying to prop up the stock price, or is it idiots who looked at the companies a decade ago -- or who heard some line on some idiotic finance show about Apple being smaller -- and they stick to that idea regardless of the fact that it's completely untrue? Really, at this point I have no shares in either company, and am just curious why this delusion about Nokia persists.

Re:Apple is just trying not to appear weak

[Anonymous Coward]

market cap != company size

Re:Apple is just trying not to appear weak

[The End Of Days]

Nokia has more employees, but Apple makes more money. Nokia sells tons more phones, but Apple has a hell of a lot of other lines. Overall, Apple looks to be in better shape. It's fairly hard to compare companies using a general metric like size since there are so many factors. Seems like Apple is healthier in general, although Nokia is "bigger" for whatever that means.

Looking at valuation, Apple could probably buy Nokia if they decided to, but that's not in the least bit likely. Apple's not big into the low end.

So far as the story goes, obviously this is just negotiation tactics.

What surprises me is that Apple is responsible for licensing the radio patents. It's not like they build the radios, they just buy them and integrate them. Seems like Broadcom or whoever they use as the radio vendor would have to handle that. I don't know the details of the case, though, so I'm really just talking out my ass here.

Overall I'd say they should suck it up and license the damn things, even though Nokia wants those precious multitouch patents. It's pretty clear Apple is infringing.

Re:Apple is just trying not to appear weak

[LoverOfJoy]

According to Wikipedia, Apple has 35,000 employees worldwide. Nokia has over 128,000. It has 39,350 employees just in research and development. When over 30% of your employees are in R&D, you're going to take your patents very seriously. In that sense, Nokia is much bigger than Apple. But I can see your point WRT market cap. Apple has a lot of money to throw around.

Re:Apple is just trying not to appear weak

[prayag]

Looking at valuation, Apple could probably buy Nokia if they decided to, but that's not in the least bit likely. Apple's not big into the low end.

Nokia is as big as apple in terms of total assets. They are equal in terms of annual income and bigger in terms of revenue. Nokia equally matches Apple in terms of finances and has more employees. Just because Apple has more presence in US, doesn't mean it can just buy it out.

Re:Apple is just trying not to appear weak

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to mention Nokia ONLY develops phones but Apple has to make laptops, mp3 players, "iSlates" and whatever other white crap they're selling this season. So after the gigantic marketing dept. is subtractred and the chinese sweatshops that actually make the shit the total employee Apple actually has for research is disturbingly small. Another American company trying to dominate by stealing other people's work and using slick marketing.

Re:Apple is just trying not to appear weak

[icsx]

Nokia is Bigger. They have more employees because they do a hell of a lot more things than just design stuff and marketing. They have their own factories in which the phones are built. Apple just gives money to some chinese company to make their own iPhone and puts a hefty pricetag on the top. It's much easier to do 1 phone than 1+49 others. Nokia could sell out their factories and limit their company's agenda to management, R&D and marketing but that would be just stupid at the scale which they are now. They controll everything from top to bottom, Apple has control over only the things that are on top. Apple is far from the leading top from mobile phones and has a lot to learn.

Why would Apple would even want to buy Nokia? It's not like there's 50,1% of shares free out there on the market, waiting for someone to buy them off. Even hostile takeover isn't possible.

Re:Apple is just trying not to appear weak

[rve]

You forget that Apple has fanboys, and Nokia does not. Nokia might as well settle now, apologise, pay an undisclosed sum and retreat from the American market again.

Re:Apple is just trying not to appear weak

[caladine]

The radio vendor Apple uses (Infineon) already licenses the patents in order to build their baseband chips. However, if you read the terms of the licenses, they aren't (and I can't remember the actual term) "follow-on" licenses. Meaning anyone that uses those chips also has to license the appropriate technology in order to use them. Apple and Nokia are playing the usual game. Apple wants too much for the "precious" multi-touch patents, and Nokia just wants to do what most companies do in the industry. Set up a cross-licensing agreement and be done with it.

Re:Apple is just trying not to appear weak

[Kumiorava]

Only if they are contractually obligated to pay for GSM licensing fees. Most likely not, they let the customers to take care of these issues. In any case that debacle would be between Apple and GSM chipset manufacturer, Nokia isn't concerned about how Apple phone is made.

Re:Apple is just trying not to appear weak

[Anonymous Coward]

Your view is stereotypical US worldview, which downplays market stability the company has acquired, especially on non-domestic markets, to quite a bit. This illusion is also the reason why Apple stocks are so overvalued and Nokia stocks are not doing very well. US investors, with their understandably but still pointlessly narrow worldview affect both companies' value more than it would make sense.

I think future of Apple is actually very much more unpredictable than that of Nokia. It's also a giant gamble to let so profilic licensing negotiation regarding so essential function of their main product to escalate to the court level from Apple's part.

What I expect that has been going on is that Apple would have tried to offer cross-licensing deal, offering subportion of their UI patents for GSM/3GPP essential patents of Nokia, knowing that this would make Nokia fear that other essential patent owners would see it as aversion from FRAND practices, and potentially even put Apple stronger position in requiring cross-licensing deals from other GSM IP owners. Anyway, Apple has nothing to lose if it tries to make GSM IP owners fight with each other and thus weaken them in comparison to itself. It's primary goal might be changing or breaking the whole FRAND practice of GSM patents, obviously for its' own benefit. What it doesn't have is capability to dispute the essentialness of the selected Nokia patents. In this regard, it's really a gamble; even in Nokia-Qualcomm dispute, Nokia minimized its losses to paying some licensing fees when the dispute was on.

What I fear, as someone that's reasonably close and dependent on Nokia R&D ecosystem, is that Nokia has itself stepped too far from FRAND practices and Apple really has something to claim on that front. I don't believe Nokia lawyers are as much idiots as Apple bosses are bigots; but somehow this situation has occurred. It would be nice to know how, but unlikely to happen for several years...

Re:Apple is just trying not to appear weak

[Kumiorava]

Biggest reason why Apple has so much money to throw around is the fact that Apple doesn't pay any dividends and lets the money sit on low interest accounts. Nokia has been a good dividend payer for years and will do so, as any mature company should. Right now market cap for Apple is huge, but it's based on future prospects with no dividend policy. I really don't know how the investors are going to get their money out of Apple. Are Apple investors waiting for LBO or liquidation? I mean regular buy and hold investor should get money back somehow from a successful company, right?

Re:Apple is just trying not to appear weak

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to mention Nokia ONLY develops phones but Apple has to make laptops, mp3 players, "iSlates" and whatever other white crap they're selling this season.

You might want to have a look at what Nokia actually develops before limiting it to just phones.

Re:Apple is just trying not to appear weak

[Anonymous Coward]

Personally I think Apple is overrated as far as innovation goes. They basically just have a really slick marketing dept. but I don't know why they would be over valued...AAPL trades at 30x earning while NOK trades at 60x earnigs. So NOK look much overvalued comparatively. On the other hand would I go long on AAPL? Probably not. I don't really like AAPL from a business practices stand point they are no better than Microsoft. And their tech is only marginally better.

Re:Apple is just trying not to appear weak

[Anonymous Coward]

Nokia has more employees, but Apple makes more money. Nokia sells tons more phones, but Apple has a hell of a lot of other lines. Overall, Apple looks to be in better shape. It's fairly hard to compare companies using a general metric like size since there are so many factors. Seems like Apple is healthier in general, although Nokia is "bigger" for whatever that means.

It seems that way because Nokia is a research and production company and Apple is a marketing company. Nokia invent real stuff, they then have their own factories produce that stuff. Apple cludge together preexisting parts, let somebody else make the product and then use most of its resources on marketing. Marketing is cheap and has a high immidiate yield, but it has only a value as long as people belive in it. Factories, research and know-how has higher costs and less yield but are more solid assets than goodwill in the long run.

Re:Apple is just trying not to appear weak

[Anonymous Coward]

Looking at valuation, Apple could probably buy Nokia if they decided to, but that's not in the least bit likely. Apple's not big into the low end.

Nokia is as big as apple in terms of total assets. They are equal in terms of annual income and bigger in terms of revenue. Nokia equally matches Apple in terms of finances and has more employees. Just because Apple has more presence in US, doesn't mean it can just buy it out.

Actually it does. A lot of large, profitable, financibly stabil European companies has been bought up by smaller, not profitable US companies with no real assets, just because US banks and government are very relaxed when it comes to lending/giving money to domestic companies. The bought up companies usually end up as empty shells.

Re:Apple is just trying not to appear weak

[Hognoxious]

But I can see your point WRT market cap. Apple has a lot of money to throw around.

Market cap != cash.

Re:Apple is just trying not to appear weak

[wfolta]

Apple fought Apple Corps -- a similar David v Goliath battle (Apple is David) -- for decades before finally winning. Personally, I think the odds are about even in this fight.

Re:Apple is just trying not to appear weak

[tjstork]

I mean regular buy and hold investor should get money back somehow from a successful company, right?

Then don't invest in Apple.

Re:Apple is just trying not to appear weak

[dingen]

Not to mention Nokia ONLY develops phones

I have a Nokia television.

Re:Apple is just trying not to appear weak

[KarmaMB84]

Buy a chip from Qualcomm doesn't even protect you from Qualcomm's patents if you forget to setup royalty payments. They're certainly not going to protect you from Nokia.

Re:Apple is just trying not to appear weak

[Anonymous Coward]

While I am not joking in the slightest, apple investors realize that just like everything else apple makes, their stock is heavily overpriced and tons of stupid people will buy it, even as dozens of competitors have better function and ROI at much lower prices.

On the other hand, buy and hold investors realize that they are investing, which carries the risk of not getting a return; especially when a company has no dividends currently. They either believe that apple will make so much cash that they will return some of it to investors or they really, really, really like icrap and are expecting apple to use their investment to make new icrap and want it more than they want a return on their investment that they could easily and reasonably obtain from dozens of competitors.

Re:Apple is just trying not to appear weak

[Anonymous Coward]

dividends are not a right to common stock holders
dividends are double taxed once on the corporate level and another on the personal level (income tax) capital gain is not.
not all companies pay dividends i believe microsoft has never paid one too.
stock price usually falls to an amount equal to the dividend pay out.
there are many types of dividends not just cash like stock splits which apple have done in the past.

dividends are not always attractive to investors its perfectly normal and very acceptable for a company to never issue any kind of dividends.

if you like dividends AAPL is not the stock for you.

Re:Apple is just trying not to appear weak

[The End Of Days]

Apple does do more with its business than a phone, you know. Arguably they don't even really do phones, they just happened to graft a telephony stack onto a very advanced PMP.

All of which is to say that what Nokia does as a core business is just one thing Apple does overall, making direct comparisons even more nebulous.

I still say Nokia was in the right initially, although their price might be unreasonable from Apple's perspective.

Re:Apple is just trying not to appear weak

[ducomputergeek]

I bought Apple $1,500 worth of shares at around $18 in 1999. I rode it up, watched it split once, and when the price hit $120 I dumped it. Figured I had made about 6x's my investment, I had held the stock for over 5 years at that point so lower capital gains, and so it was time to take some profits. That's how I made some money in Apple stock.

Re:Apple is just trying not to appear weak

[mokeyboy]

Mod parent up. Market cap is also not acquisition value (usually about x8 market cap).

Re:Apple is just trying not to appear weak

[sznupi]

Nokia develops (actually does that in greater part vs. getting OEM solutions) and manufactures its products. Most outside of China.

Re:Apple is just trying not to appear weak

[initialE]

What I don't understand about the multi-touch patents is what it covers. Didn't Apple (along with Microsoft and HP when they made their tables) just copy their multi-touch from a concept implementation done a few years before, long after the existing patents on multi-touch had expired?

Re:Apple is just trying not to appear weak

[caladine]

Patent 7,479,949:

Abstract:
A computer-implemented method for use in conjunction with a computing device with a touch screen display comprises: detecting one or more finger contacts with the touch screen display, applying one or more heuristics to the one or more finger contacts to determine a command for the device, and processing the command. The one or more heuristics comprise: a heuristic for determining that the one or more finger contacts correspond to a one-dimensional vertical screen scrolling command, a heuristic for determining that the one or more finger contacts correspond to a two-dimensional screen translation command, and a heuristic for determining that the one or more finger contacts correspond to a command to transition from displaying a respective item in a set of items to displaying a next item in the set of items.

First off, IANAPL (I am not a patent lawyer).

I know, looking at the abstract isn't particularly helpful as it's horrible patent legal speak. All you really need to notice is the repeated use of the word "heuristics". This is a software patent. They're patenting the heuristic (READ: software) used to determine what a user means by multiple figured gesture on a touch screen. The claims in the patent just go on to clarify what heuristics they're covering.

To answer your second question, I'm not really sure. In any case, it's my hope that when the Supreme Court reviews the "machine-or-transformation" test with the In re Bilski case that this and other software patents will be invalidated.

Re:Apple is just trying not to appear weak

[larkost]

Wow, this was a really poorly researched quote.

Microsoft's last dividend was $0.17/share on November 17th, 2009 (they pay dividends quarterly). Apple's last dividend was November 21, 1995.

Stock splits are not dividends, they are accounting changes. People get excited about them, but they don't fundamentally change anything but the numbers.

The "double taxation" bit is just silly. Companies are taxed for their earnings, and people are charged for their earning, since companies are legally a form of individual this is right and good. There are taxes levied on the earnings my employer makes (gross), and I am then taxed for their paycheck to me. Is this "double taxation"? I am much more in favor of dividend (and capital gains) taxes because they are levied on "free" money, by that I mean money that people are getting without doing any productive work on it. I do trade on the stock market (an action different than investing), and I do get dividends on occasion. I consider that all free money and am happy to pay any taxes on it that they care to levy, because I am getting extra money without doing any real work for it.

As long as I can continue to make money on it (and there is no sign that that is about to stop) then I will continue to do so. People who claim that "double taxation" will prevent people from wanting to invest their money are just plain stupid, or are lying through their teeth in order to serve their own greed. Even Warren Buffet (the investor behind Berkshire Hathaway) has come out on the record with a similar argument to mine.

Re:Apple is just trying not to appear weak

[CountBrass]

Actually in the only useful measure, worth, Apple is three times the size of Nokia and has more cash in the bank than Nokia is worth. There will be some huffing and puffing and it probably won't get near to a court and then there will be agreement and Apple and Nokia wil be best friends for ever and ever. This is business, not some silly fight to the death as the (so far only Nokia judging by the /. posting) fan boys seems to imagine.

Patent regime became rotten

[Anonymous Coward]

There are patents for very minute parts of various systems, so many working systems like, say, a measly iPod, touch on whole lotta patents, held by various parties.

So, inevitably, it becomes lawyers' game. My army of lawyers can annihilate your army of lawyers. You're a two-bit player without a lawyer army? You're not qualified to play the patent game.

The small-scale inventors with brilliant idea to benefit by the patent regime is a myth.

One can argue that's the case with all things legal, and I am not sure I disagree.

Haha.

[RightSaidFred99]

Apple is posturing. Trying to take Nokia on in the mobile phone arena patent domain is like Bill Gates trying to fight Klitschko in a heavyweight boxing title. Apple will get destroyed. They really should just rush to settle.

Re:Haha.

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you captain obvious!

Re:Haha.

[Anonymous Coward]

like Bill Gates trying to fight Klitschko in a heavyweight boxing title.

I am interested in your ideas and would like to subscribe to your cable network

Standing ground

[icsx]

Does Apple really think they can do a mobile phone to the market in few years without violating any of Nokia's iventions done in the past 20 years that are patented? They think they do but reality is different. This is just Apple's response to get better negotiation grounds and with luck, they get a Judge who has Apple laptop to the case. Only then Apple has chances to win 1 round but only lose at the end at the higher court level.

This can only end in one way...

[Windwraith]

Apple and Nokia merger a reality on Mon 15 Nov 07:25AM
Posted by ****** on Mon 15 Nov 07:25AM
from the war-becomes-love dept.

are you kidding?

[Uberbah]

Nokia might have more employees and sell more phones, but Apple makes more money - in fact they could buy a controlling interest in Nokia with their cash-on-hand and fire Durrant's ass on the spot.

Re:are you kidding?

[B47h0ry'5 CuR53]

Hahaha, and that you think makes more business sense than just licensing the patents (tens of billions vs tens of millions of $$)? I'm sure Apple stockholders are glad that you aren't running the company.

Re:are you kidding?

[Splab]

Except you can't just buy stocks, someone has to be willing to sell them - and if word got out that Apple was trying to buy out Nokia to get rid of the patent trouble Nokia shares would explode - and Apple would be in big problems with international trade organizations since that move would imply they think they are in trouble.

If Apple where to lose patent cases in US and/or EU they might have money right now, but that would go bad real fast.

Disclaimer: I'm a HTC fanboi.

Re:are you kidding?

[Uberbah]

Nokia is the one of the largest cell phone makers in the world, a profitable company, and has large marketshare where Apple has little to no presence - and you think buying them would be a bad move?

So do you keep your head up your ass because it's a comfortable position for you, or is it for the warmth, or what?

Re:are you kidding?

[Uberbah]

Offer $5 more than the going share price and watch sellers line up. And you don't necessarily have to buy a majority of the shares to be in a dominant position within the company, since not all shareholders vote. And if they did buy Nokia, their international litigation over this would go away.

know the courts

[Tom]

Oh, please. This is standard procedure in a lawsuit. Since the judges almost always try to get the parties to settle, you don't start with a reasonable demand, you start with the maximum the law allows for, because the other party does the same. Then you meet in the middle.

IANAL but I've done a number of corporate lawsuits, on both sides (suing and being sued). This is just how it works. If you actually get your initial demand, you'd be as surprised as everyone else.

Re:know the courts

[sznupi]

Well, it gets more interesting when whole issue is seen with those rules in mind.

What is non-reasonable demand for Apple? Dismissing Nokia patents while using them very actively, not willing to cross license patents (as everybody in the industry does), demanding discriminatory (because much lower than everybody else is paying) terms for licensing of said patents.

For Nokia that would be actively infringing on Apple patents and not willing to license GSM/etc. patents unless Apple cross-licenses. And...that's not what they want. Seems like Nokia almost started in the middle ground...

can people declare if they own shares

[cheekyboy]

Every single pro or anti post needs a declration stating if they own either apple or nokia shares.

Otherwise youre statements of "Apple is god, they are inocent" are defensive and self interest based.

I own neither.

Gawd Apple Sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

And they just continue to suck worse every time I read about them. Unfortunately, when they get their nose bloodied from this fight, it'll be back to picking on little guys again.

Mmm, Nokia should sue Apple

[SmallFurryCreature]

For copying it's legal moves.

Nokia has a good history when it comes to patents

[Anonymous Coward]

Because every other company has agreed to Nokia's terms. I doubt that this would have happened if their claims were without merit. In addition, Nokia has no history of patent trolling. They spend massive amounts of money to research and are responsible for many of the most important inventions related to mobile data transfer. In addition, they license all their patents rather reasonably to all the competitors. Companies like Nokia are why the patent system exists.

So, when Apple suddenly decides not to pay any licensing fees, I trust Nokia a whole lot more.

Arrogant Apple Strikes Again!

[sensationull]

Apple's arrogance shines through again as they deny that rules apply to them. They are quite happy to crush people, products and companies for even mentioning Apple in a less than positive light but refuse to accept that other companies have rights to. Nokia made more of the sodding iPhone than Apple did in terms of R&D and now as usuall are getting bitchy that people are actually expecting them to play by the rules. Something they have mostly avoided or lawyer mobbed their way out of until now.

I hope that Nokia epicly crushes Apple on the legal front to finally put Apple in its place for once. Chances are though that the usual Apple chroneisum will triumph when the standard issue iPod equiped, narrow minded US legal system gets its incompetant mitts on it.

I agree that they should take it to the EU, not that I usually support the EU's special brand of crazy that gives them liscence to print money from other peoples accounts (Intel, Microsoft) but it would be fantastic to finally see Apple being held to the same standard as everyone else. Hell the EU even questioned the mighty iTunes, maybe this time they will actually take action.

Re:Arrogant Apple Strikes Again!

[maccam]

Who exactly has been crushed by Apple simply for simply criticing the company? Paul Thurott and Rob Enderle have been "mentioning Apple in a less than positive light" and worse for years. Why have they not been crushed by the arrogant Apple that seems to exist in your mind?

Re:Arrogant Apple Strikes Again!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm hoping that there is no settlement. I was thinking Nokia was trying to achieve some cross-licensing agreement to use the multi-touch technology, and Apple seeing they can use that to keep everyone else "one step back", refused.

I'm a bit worried Nokia settles down to obtain licensing for the multi-touch (which Apple probably wants to sell for much more than it should), and I think Nokia deserves more than that.

Re:Arrogant Apple Strikes Again!

[wfolta]

Actually, Apple claims that the rules SHOULD apply to them, and that it is Nokia that is wanting to change the rules in the case of a competitor that scares them. Whether this is true or not will come out in court, I imagine.

Nokia's evidently poured a lot of money into phone R&D, but looking at their phones almost none of this has extended to industrial design or user interface design. Even their "smart" phones look like a 1980's military design with a 1970's X-Windows user interface. And while they manage to have touch, they evidently never thought of using them as anything but 1980's style touch screens. So I do find it credible that they are treating Apple as a special threat.

Re:Arrogant Apple Strikes Again!

[Spatial]

I agree that they should take it to the EU, not that I usually support the EU's special brand of crazy that gives them liscence to print money from other peoples accounts (Intel, Microsoft) but it would be fantastic to finally see Apple being held to the same standard as everyone else.

Fining companies for harming the market and consumers is the exact opposite of 'crazy'. Such fines have long-term benefits for everybody big and small alike.

Price fixing, collusion, anti-competitive practises. They are bad. They hurt companies. They hurt consumers in both choice and price.

And if you're alluding to the notion that the EU only fines non EU-based companies: the meme is false. Dozens of other EU companies have been fined on precisely the same grounds. You never heard of it because as far as the US media is concerned, things that don't affect the USA don't exist. That goes for Slashdot too.

Re:Arrogant Apple Strikes Again!

[sensationull]

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-10302038-37.html
http://www.digitaltrends.com/international/missing-prototype-iphone-leads-to-chinese-workers-death/
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/01/14/211242
http://timecapsuledead.org/

Apple has a long history of threatening decenters against its 'grand vision', there have been multiple instances where large chunks of their own support forums have been purged because users were critisizing Apple for their laptops keys melting (suspend issue) or their ipods burning or their laptop power adapters failing or their timecapsule powerbricks dieing after almost exactly a year. All of these took massive user lashback to get fixed inside warrenty in some cases these defective products never were.

The story of the iPod above retells that in order to get a replacement they had to agree not to reveal that the product had a fault ever. This is the kind of behaviour that is acceptable to you? How many other stories have never been told thanks to Apple raverous lawyers?

If you think that the arrogance of Apple only exists in my mind then you need to get your rampant fanboyisum in check and read more of the internet than what is released in Apple press releases.

Re:Arrogant Apple Strikes Again!

[jo_ham]

Of course Apple want to play by the rules - they are not simply saying "nah nah we don't have to licence Nokia's patents". They are arguing about the nature of Nokia's strong arming (that under the rules that Nokia agreed to when their patented tech became part of the GSM standard they would not be discriminatory in their cross licencing or charging of fees). Apple are claiming that Nokia are breaking those rules and are after far more from Apple than anyone else they licence their patents to. Nokia are, of course, saying that it's all fair and fine. The two don't agree, thus courts get involved. It's not rocket surgery. They will eventually settle and the patents will be cross licenced. Apple aren't seeking to just *not pay* - they just don;t want to be bullied into paying much more than anyone else Nokia has dealt with (and while that in itself is not ordinarily something they can moan about, it is when Nokia created the GSM standard with their patents).

I'd be interested to hear how Apple have "lawyer mobbed" their way out of playing by the rules - do you have any specific citations? I am genuinely curious, although since you seem to think are not held to the same standard as any company in the eyes of the law, I suspect it's just biased ranting.

Disclaimer: I am not rabidly "pro-apple" or "anti-anyone-who-goes-against-apple" - I just tend to actually look at what is being discussed and try not to make sweeping generalisations based on my own bias. I have no idea which way this one will come out - clearly Nokia has put a great deal of R&D into GSM and mobil tech and obviously Apple needs to pay to use that tech. We do not know Nokia's terms though. Apple are claiming that they are (contractually enforceable) unfair - are they? Who knows. That's what the courts are for, as well as some unpleasant grandstanding from both sides.

Re:Arrogant Apple Strikes Again!

[UnknowingFool]

In all your examples, I fail to see how Apple has "threatened" dissenters. Here's a summary of all your complaints:

1. A user complains his iPod exploded. Apple offers a refund in exchange for a non-disclosure agreement. Such practice is standard; you might argue that isn't right, but that's another argument. But I read nowhere that "threats" were issued.
2. An engineer with Apple's manufacturer Foxconn commits suicide after misplacing an iPhone prototype. Again, there no threats alleged in the matter.
3. A user complains that a kernel panic occurs when using nVidia cards on a MacPro. His comments are removed. Again, no "threats" are issued.
4. Time capsule users are experiencing failures of the unit after 19 months. Users stand to lose all their backup data. But again there are no "threats" involved.

In all your examples, Apple could be more forthcoming. They could also better at handling the matter but you are not accurately characterizing the situation. No threats were issued in any of them.

Re:Arrogant Apple Strikes Again!

[NimbleSquirrel]

Actually, Apple claims that the rules SHOULD apply to them, and that it is Nokia that is wanting to change the rules in the case of a competitor that scares them. Whether this is true or not will come out in court, I imagine.

Whether this is true or not is rather irreleveant as Apple was LEGALLY OBLIGED to sort out that licensing deal BEFORE the iPhone was released. Apple didn't (presumably to keep the iPhone secret until the last minute). All Nokia need to do is prove that Apple knowingly released a product that would infringe on Nokia's patents, and the whole arguement about FRAND terms is pointless. Apple's legal defense seems to be 'they didn't want to sell it to usfor the price we wanted to pay, so that gives us the right to take it anyway'.

Re:Arrogant Apple Strikes Again!

[sznupi]

A special threat as far as allowing one company to ignore the kinds of agreements Nokia has with everybody else in the industry. As far as products go Apple doesn't even want to compete with most of Nokia offers, never mind your inaccurate perception of them...

Apple are the bad guys here.

[Exception Duck]

This is just a feeling I have, but somehow the evil American corporation is more likely then the evil Finnish corporation.

AppleNokia!

[ultramarweeni]

It'd help a lot both companies and their shareholders if they just merged their smartphone businesses instead of this stupid vendetta. Just think of an AppleNokia smartphone with the sleekness and UI of an iPhone 3GS and customability, Linux and the keypad from N900.

Re:AppleNokia!

[Idbar]

Just think of an AppleNokia smartphone
Do you mean, something like an iPhone but actually with a good phone that doesn't drop calls and fail miserably most of the time?

Re:AppleNokia!

[Jesus_666]

You realize that Apple's UI would come with Apple's OS and Apple's lockdown policy? It's unlikely that they'd port Cocoa touch to Linux even though they already have a smartphone OS that does everything they want. Likewise, I don't see much of a business case for allowing the user to customize his phone. If anything, you'd see both lines continued in parallel.

Also, neither company has any reason to merge. Both of their smartphone businesses are going well; Nokia can most likely just dodge Apple's patents if things go wrong and Apple doesn't have the money to strongarm Nokia into anything. Plus, every time Apple tries to mix their brand with someone else's it desn't go very well (eg. the HP iPod, the Motorola ROKR...).

This will end with both companies agreeing on licensing terms and those terms will be closer to what Nokia wants than to what Apple wants. Apple has a few cool UI things; Nokia has patents neccessary to make any kind of phone at all. Most of Apple's patents just aren't quite worth (to Nokia) as much as those they license off Ericcson etc.

Re:AppleNokia!

[sznupi]

Mot importantly, the goals of the two companies are quite at odds.

Apple is interested in selling a "premium" experience for those who are willing and able to pay for it (very small part of the humanity)

Nokia, while also offering advanced devices, has wide spectrum of phones; making the means of communication available to much larger number of people (they wouldn't sold 1 billion phones in the last two years vs. 30 million of Apple). Heck, Nokia even stated they would like to make, in a few years, a phone that costs 5 Euro...and it doesn't seem that tongue-in-cheek, considering they are now at 20 Euro (while a year ago - at 25; and a year before that at 30 or so)

I don't see how those two approaches could suddenly coexist in a single corporate entity.

Re:AppleNokia!

[Jesus_666]

Note that for a while you could get the 1110i for 10 EUR in Germany. Contract-free. Nokia is very effectively covering the budget sector while at the same time offering high-end devices people in the market describe as tasty. But for me the important part is that I can get a decent phone that does everything I want for the price of a moderate-to-large USB stick.

Re:AppleNokia!

[sznupi]

Hm, Aldi? Gotta check them more often... ;) (a hop across the border; or perhaps there is some website tracking such deals in DE?)

Those lower-end Nokias are phenomenal also in the EU even you have more advanced phone already - phenomenal battery life and reception, very sturdy, great as a backup or when hiking.

Classic apple strategy

[sosume]

Apple uses this kind of practice all the time. Can't win against Microsoft? File antitrust against them. Can't win against Nokia? same.

Ban Nokia from the USA

[tjstork]

Nokia is not an American company. Apple is. I'm sick of foreign companies stomping all over the USA. Kick Nokia out.

Re:Ban Nokia from the USA

[newcastlejon]

Fine, let them. Then let the rest of the world disregard US patents while Apple and Qualcomm et al. ignore Nokia's. Nokia still has the rest of the world and everyone can benefit from the billions of dollar's research it took to discover that people have more than one finger...

Re:Ban Nokia from the USA

[pydev]

The US has far more to lose in a trade war than Finland. Furthermore, almost none of the technologies that make the iPhone what it is were invented or created by Apple in the first place; Apple liberally "borrowed" the best ideas from other companies (Palm, Xerox, Psion, Nokia, etc.), tried to avoid stepping on other people's patents, and, well, we'll have to see how it works out.

Re:Ban Nokia from the USA

[Anonymous Coward]

Note that the lawsuit is against *importing* iPhones into the USA. USA doesn't have the know-how to make its own phones so they are manufactured in more advanced foreign countries :-)

Re:Ban Nokia from the USA

[drinkypoo]

I'm sick of foreign companies stomping all over the USA.

Don't be mad at Nokia then, be mad at NAFTA. Or more to the point, the robber barons who put it together. And how American is Apple anyway? Their PCBs are made by Foxconn just like the Taiwanese brands. No large corporation is really a USA affair any more; they are all multinational. Just like Apple.

Here is how it will end:

[Hurricane78]

HEY APPLE
  INSULT
  LAWSUIT
  COUNTER-LAWSUIT
  QUESTIONING OF SEXUAL PREFERENCE
  SUGGESTION TO SHUT THE FUCK UP
  NOTATION THAT YOU CREATE A VACUUM
  LAWSUIT
  ADDON LAWSUIT
  COUNTER-LAWSUIT
  COUNTER-COUNTER LAWSUIT
  NONSENSICAL STATEMENT INVOLVING PLANKTON
  RESPONSE TO RANDOM STATEMENT AND THREAT TO BAN OPPOSING SIDES
  WORDS OF PRAISE FOR BRIBERY
  ACKNOWLEDGEMENT AND ACCEPTENCE OF TERMS

Re:Here is how it will end:

[Hurricane78]

AAAAAAAAH! Slashdot ate all the tags! In plain text mode! Please do NOT mod the parent post up! I posted it another time, but then properly.

Re:Here is how it will end:

[dingen]

Please do NOT mod the parent post up!

No worries, mate.

"Come to an agreement"

[nurb432]

Which will involve soaking the customer to pay for it.

Here is how it will end: (Bug circumvented now.)

[Hurricane78]

<Nokia> HEY APPLE
<Nokia> INSULT
<Apple> LAWSUIT
<Nokia> COUNTER-LAWSUIT
<Apple> QUESTIONING OF SEXUAL PREFERENCE
<Nokia> SUGGESTION TO SHUT THE FUCK UP
<Apple> NOTATION THAT YOU CREATE A VACUUM
<Nokia> LAWSUIT
<Nokia> ADDON LAWSUIT
<Apple> COUNTER-LAWSUIT
<Nokia> COUNTER-COUNTER LAWSUIT
<Apple> NONSENSICAL STATEMENT INVOLVING PLANKTON
<FTC> RESPONSE TO RANDOM STATEMENT AND THREAT TO BAN OPPOSING SIDES
<Apple> WORDS OF PRAISE FOR BRIBERY
<FTC> ACKNOWLEDGEMENT AND ACCEPTENCE OF TERMS

Slashdot anti-Apple bias

[javacowboy]

I'm going to get modded down for saying this, but screw it! I've got mod points to burn.

Very few Slashdotters have mentioned this, but Apple *wants* to license Nokia's patents, but under reasonable and anti-discriminatory terms. Nokia refused to offer Apple their standard patent licensing deals that they gave to everybody else in the industry, and wants to cross-license some of Apple's GUI patents or charge them three times as much. Naturally, Apple didn't go for the deal.

If Nokia offered to license its patents under non-discriminatory terms according to the ITC, then there would be no issue.

Nokia is desperate because of the market share they're losing in the cell phone business, at least in North America (I know they're still strong in Europe).

Re:Slashdot anti-Apple bias

[Tuntematon]

If Nokia offered to license its patents under non-discriminatory terms according to the ITC, then there would be no issue.

Well you don't know what the terms were or were not.

Nokia is desperate because of the market share they're losing in the cell phone business, at least in North America (I know they're still strong in Europe).

Maybe it's just my lack of english, but doesn't desperate mean something like "only thing left to do" or something like that.

In USA Nokia has been a non player for years mainly because of non existing operator "support". People in USA just don't want to buy phones without contracts. And Nokia doesn't want operators crippling their phones. But I see very little in this case that would help sell more Nokia phones in USA, so the market share loosing in US has nothing to do with this patent case..

Nokias market share is still around 38-40% of all phones sold worldwide. It sells more phones in one quarter than Apple has sold ever.

Re:Slashdot anti-Apple bias

[pydev]

Nokia refused to offer Apple their standard patent licensing deals that they gave to everybody else in the industry, and wants to cross-license some of Apple's GUI patents or charge them three times as much. Naturally, Apple didn't go for the deal.

Oh, poor poor Apple. Look at what the iPhone consists of:

-- PDA functionality -- pioneered by Psion, Xerox, and Palm
-- Mach kernel -- CMU
-- Objective-C, Cocoa -- derived from Xerox Smalltalk and Stepstone
-- App Store -- Danger (now Google)
-- multitouch -- various university labs, but Apple has tried to patent it and buy up companies
-- desktop sync -- Palm and Xerox
-- animated GUIs -- various university labs
-- MP3 player -- Kramer, Eiger, Diamond
-- music store -- IUMA, Napster, etc.
-- GPS, camera phone -- other phone manufacturers

Frankly, why does Apple deserve any kind of rights to this market? What have they contributed other than a lot of marketing and fluff?

Re:Slashdot anti-Apple bias

[drinkypoo]

People in USA just don't want to buy phones without contracts.

This is quite false. They just don't want to be robbed. Boost Mobile is doing well in places where there is actually coverage, for example. Fifty bucks for unlimited everything? OK. Also, if you actually buy a year card on a tracfone, the odds are better than even that the card will mysteriously fail and then you have to call them to get the situation resolved, at which point they demand all your personal information for the trouble ticket... so they can spam you. Because obviously, you have disposable income.

More accuraely:

[rickb928]

Nokia finds infringing product(s) from Apple
Nokia contacts Apple and asserts their patent rights, asks for a licensing agreement or cease and desist
Apple responds "not infringing!" and ignores the licensing request
Nokia responds "yes you are" and threatens to sue
Apple responds "well, you're infringing on OUR..."
Nokia says "not infringing"
Tit-for-tat at this stage for a while...

Nokia sues Apple
Apple counter sues Nokia

Nokia seeks to ban Apple Imports via ITC
Apple responds by seeking to ban Nokia imports via the ITC

Lawyers order new jets and houses

And so it goes...

Re:More accuraely:

[Hungus]

No, you might want to look at the background info again. this may be what Nokia initially claimed but neither side would say that is was the case now. Amongst other things Nokia wanted to charge apple differently than other manufacturers or at least they claim that in the counter suit. Nokia and Apple did have a shared licensing agreement at one point. Nokia tried to change the terms to something they liked better, Apple said get stuffed and it went downhill from there.

Re:More accuraely:

[rickb928]

So Apple is going to sue claiming Nokia shouldn't be asking for different (obviously higher) license fees?

Or in other words, that Nokia shouldn't be allowed to charge what they want, that would be somehow unfair?

I wonder if Nokia changed terms when Apple balked.

And when do courts get to tell Nokia how much they should charge?

Re:More accuraely:

[Hungus]

So Apple is going to sue claiming Nokia shouldn't be asking for different (obviously higher) license fees?

Yes, amongst other things.

Or in other words, that Nokia shouldn't be allowed to charge what they want, that would be somehow unfair

When you have a monopoly on technology as ubiquitous as Nokia's cell technology patents, yes it is unfair. You have two choices when you effectively control an industry with patents. 1) license them to everyone with the same or at least similar terms 2) give up the patents to other companies

I wonder if Nokia changed terms when Apple balked.

Most likely

And when do courts get to tell Nokia how much they should charge?

The courts get to decide about charges and terms when one company controls the technology for an entire industry the way Nokia does. Why is this fair? Because without said intervention Nokia becomes the authority of who can and cannot make cell phones today.

It is becoming more and more obvious

[CondeZer0]

that the patent system is a monster completely out of control.

We have gone from a system where (supposedly) the best products at the lowest price were successful, to one where the company with the best lawyers can shut down anyone else and where serving consumers is a lower and lower priority because so called 'intellectual property' can be used to limit their options.

I'm rooting for Nokia on this one

[AmonTheMetalhead]

Never been much of an Apple fan, and ever since they patented "multi touch" then can go crawl under a rock & die for all i care.

Go Nokia Go!

PS: Isn't ACTA pushing for global software patents?

Re:Nokia has a good history when it comes to paten

[jscotta44]

Soyou are saying Apple does have a history as a patent troll and should not be trusted?

Re:Sue first, ask questions later- who profits?

[Anonymous Coward]

> Is it really cheaper to sue for peace? I mean, can't the legal teams for both companies see this down the road and come to some sort of mutual agreement in
> advance? It'd sure save a lot of time and money, not to mentioning freeing the courts a bit. Why is it acceptable policy to sue instead of discussing?

AS usual the answer is "Follow the money." Who profits directly from lawsuits (and who recommends lawsuits be filed)?

It's Called an Oligopoly

[mpapet]

History shows that some form of an oligopoly/monopoly is the form of a mature market. There are some exceptions, but that's pretty much it. It definitely applies to technology markets though.

The U.S.'s legal system aggressively supports tech oligopolies like HP/Dell, Att/Verizon comcast/time warner. Adobe/?? ohh wait, that might be a monopoly. The U.S. supports monopolies too.

You probably disregarded Economics a long time ago as one of those useless psuedo sciences and like most Americans get your Economic policy from politicians who use it to further corporate interests over your own and your nation's.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oligopoly

Re:Nokia has a good history when it comes to paten

[Idiot with a gun]

Yes, that is exactly what he is saying.

Re:Nokia has a good history when it comes to paten

[Lars T.]

Because every other company has agreed to Nokia's terms.

And Apple wanted to agree to the same terms every other company agreed to - but suddenly Nokia wanted more.

Re:Nokia has a good history when it comes to paten

[jscotta44]

Evidence would be nice in an accusation. Also, I guess he is saying that Apple does not "spend massive amounts of money to research" and is not responsible for shaking up the mobile phone market and giving more power to the consumer.

Interesting take.

BTWI do not own stock in either. But one-sided comments like that with no substantiation and much evidence available to the contrary makes the position ludicrous.

I have a solution

[Eil]

Apple and Nokia should just get a hotel room and "argue" it all out.

And now Apple breaks USB rules

[Anonymous Coward]

And now Apple breaks USB rules: they use the product ID in the USB spec to lock out Palm even though they claim through the USB spec correctly that they are compatible with the iPod.

Palm then breaks the USB spec by stating not that they are merely compatible with iPod, but that they ARE iPod.

But that is ONLY because Apple broke the spec by forcing the USB compatability number to be insufficient.

Apple, if you didn't know, are actually being censured for breaking the USB spec. You don't hear about that one, just Palm breaking the USB spec.

Re:And now Apple breaks USB rules

[jo_ham]

Wow, you totally don't know what you are talking about. For the record, the USB spec has Vendor ID and Product IDs. The Vendor ID is unique to a manufacturer - ie, that code can *only* be used by the company that "owns it" (ie, has been assigned that code by the USB-IF).

What Palm did was use Apple's unique vendor ID (and product ID, but that is less of an issue, as they don't have to be unique) so that iTunes thought the Palm device was actually an Apple device.

Consider that the USB-IF *mandates* as part of the spec that a Vendor ID is *only* to be used by the company it is issued to and no one else. Palm is *not allowed* (by contract with the USB-IF) to use Apple's Vendor ID.

Apple merely changed iTunes to double check that devices that say "I was made by Apple" actually are apple devices, as assured by the USB spec.

You really, really, really do not understand the Palm/Apple USB debacle at all.

Re:And now Apple breaks USB rules

[Max Littlemore]

It's funny how people trapped by the reality distortion field will assert that two wrongs make a right as long as the second wrong is by Apple!

Summarising the exchange without the Apple goggles, Apple was once a nice company that did good work and contributed useful advances to the world of technology. They are now a company of mostly designers and lawyers that make Microsoft's embrace extend extinguish look like a model of speculative R&D. They use standards designed to correctly identify classes of technical device to enforce an anti-competitive business model.

Seriously, they now offer nothing of use to people who know how to create their own "oooh shiny" experience that "just works" without needing to be locked in to the expensive bloated crud that is iTunes/Appstore. Even the multitouch patent is of questionable validity considering it goes back to the early nineteen eighties. (but that link's from someone at microsoft research and who wants to listen to dweeds from there when... oooh shiny!)

I strongly suggest, jo_ham, that you do not cross the road at night. I fear shiny headlights of oncoming vehicles would render you incapable of moving or thinking independently.

Re:And now Apple breaks USB rules

[jo_ham]

No, they use the USB spec as it was designed. If Palm wants to use the documented methods to sync with iTunes, it can. They chose to break their contract with the USB-IF and use Apple's Vendor ID, which is contractually guaranteed to be unique to Apple.

It's not anticompetitive for Apple to do this with iTunes - iTunes is software that Apple give away for free, with iPod/iPhone syncing software that they wrote for use with their hardware.

If Palm want to write their own sync software for OS X they are free to do so, but they were too busy *not* doing that. They used to have Mac software, but they abandoned it (cheaper to just not develop the software any further and just rely on third party apps). Then they decided to skip those third party apps and just spoof being an iPod. It is *not* anticompetitive to ensure that your iTunes app now ensures it checks the validity of the USB standard by confirming vendor ID (which it didn't do initially). When Palm then went around them again, they made it further stringent.

Palm is still free to write software to sync with iTunes if it chooses. It chooses not to. No anticompetitive issues there at all.

I find it interesting that you have gone right for the ad hominem attack rather than any actual solid argument. It does speak volumes.

It's also interesting that you talk about offering nothing of value to those who know how to make their own shinies without needing the "bloated crud of iTunes/Appstore" when that is *exactly* what Palm were trying to get themselves into - Apple's "bloated and cruddy" iTunes. Where's Palm's shiny sync software and media app? Right, sorry, they don't need to make one.

Incidentally iTunes is not expensive - it is free. It is a free download from Apple. The content on the appstore (for the phone) varies and is not set by Apple. The music and movies, again vary in price and the price is not set by Apple.

I tend not to cross the road at night because my night vision is not what it once was and I have occasional problems judging distance in low light when there are bright headlights. I suspect I would have this problem regardless of what OS and hardware combo I used, unless you know of some unique benefit to my ailing vision that "people who know how to make their own 'ooh shiny' experience" can offer me? I'm all ears, or eyes.

Re:And now Apple breaks USB rules

[drinkypoo]

It's not anticompetitive for Apple to do this with iTunes - iTunes is software that Apple give away for free, with iPod/iPhone syncing software that they wrote for use with their hardware.

Sega v. Accolade. Look it up. Tell me just what the difference is, except that the vendor lock-in is codified in a standard.

It's also interesting that you talk about offering nothing of value to those who know how to make their own shinies without needing the "bloated crud of iTunes/Appstore" when that is *exactly* what Palm were trying to get themselves into - Apple's "bloated and cruddy" iTunes.

This is patently (heh) false. You can't get access to all the information from iTunes via the "acceptable" methods. Palm was trying to get access to information that belongs to the customer, in order to permit them to use that data.

Besides, it is simply true that Apple has nothing to offer technically which would allow them to compete with Linux. Their only competitive factor is fanboyism. Apple fanboys are willing to spend more money than Linux fanboys. But I have all the eye candy of OSX on my Ubuntu desktop, where it is substantially more configurable and useful. I turned off all that reflection bullshit for example, so that I'm not wasting space on irrelevant nonsense. So I HAVE it, but have disabled some because it is stupid. Too bad that on OSX it's Jobs' way or the highway. Maybe it's the turtleneck's fault, though, kind of like Spider-Man and Venom.

Re:And now Apple breaks USB rules

[jo_ham]

Hold on, you think that the only competitive factor is fanboyism?

I think you are grossly underestimating the benefits of owning a Mac. What if "Apple's way or the highway" happens to coincide with what I want (mostly)?

I don't use OS X purely because of the eye candy - you can't paint me into a box that easily. There are more benefits than just the looks (which are pleasant, and heavily modifiable if you really want through third party tools).

I'm also not saying that it's perfect or there aren't things I'd like to change that are probably editable on Ubuntu (I'm still playing with that on my 15" PB - it's nice, but I'm not totally au fait with it yet), but they are small annoyances that aren;t enough to make me change to a different platform. The annoyances with W2K eventually did build up enough for me to swap to Mac, and if enough build up in OS X I will look at the options again but right now I am very happy with it. If I do change I will be keeping the hardware though - that is well worth the price for me.

There is a pervasive undercurrent that flows through /. that anyone who doesn't use some flavour of Linux is a clueless sheep who only goes for style over any function. Do you think I sit in front of this machine and flap helplessly because my shiny box doesn't actually *do anything*?! It serves my needs very well, and unfortunately carries with it the baggage that it's a hopeless bonnet-welded-shut OS that has nothing but shiny buttons that do nothing but animate when clicked like one of those toy steering wheels you can attach to a car seat for your toddler.

As for what OS X can offer to compete with Linux, it does have a lot more than just the shiny GUI - you can go right in at the command line if you want, and while it is likely to be somewhat alien compared to Linux, it is a fully fledged Unix core under all those fluffy pink buttons that can do just as much as an Ubuntu box can do, with the benefit of being able to fire up commercial, supported native apps (ie, no need for Wine/etc) at the same time.

I'd love for there to be a lot more of that on Linux - I am quite liking the repurposing and experimentation I am doing with my PB, but it would be nice to have a version of iTunes to put on there that worked with my homesharing from my main machine. I have worked around it (pointed the music player at the iTunes folder on my network, but it's not quite the same), and I know there are plenty of OSS ways to manage a music library and jukebox apps across multiple machines, but I like iTunes on my main box etc.

Regarding iTunes and syncing. Yes, the standard open method does much less than the full iPod/iPhone sync, but it is possible for manufacturers to "go deeper" than that by talking to Apple directly, but then Apple aren;t giving that away. I know there have been third party players in the past that have done it this way (although whether they are still doing it, I am not sure). Palm are also free to write their own sync software that can gather almost all of the same data that iTunes itself can (address book, music, iCal, photos etc - but I don;t think you can read the iTunes library file, only the XML version it spits out), but Palm decided not to do that. They did used to have a piece of software for that purpose but stopped supporting it, hence the rise of The Missing Sync, which has developed into quite an app: http://www.markspace.com/products/pre/mac-features.html - This third party app does everything that Palm was replicating by spoofing Apple's Vendor ID. That was cheaper to do than bundling copies of The Missing Sync or writing their own version.

I realise that Apple has to justify the higher price paid for entry into their closed ecosystem, where they are the gatekeepers, with the vertical integration aggressive phone SDK etc, only for people to come into that system knowing all this and yet still moaning that they can't do whatever they want because it's not open/free/etc. If it doesn't suit the purpose, they don't have to buy - that's surely why things like Linux exist, where you really can do what you like.

Charging an NON GSM Member more

[Anonymous Coward]

Charging an NON GSM Member more.

Apple didn't want to join the GSM group (because they'd have to cross license things like multitouch). RAND is only for members of the GSM group.

Nokia is only asking for what they ask of other recipients of their patents: cross-license and a cheaper royalty.

It may be Nokia have found crosslicensing is not ever going to happen, so the royalty rates may well be much higher: but then Nokia is allowed. Either:

1) multi-touch isn't worth the difference, in which case, Nokia are asking too much, but why then is Apple refusing cross-licensing?
or
2) multi-touch is worth lots, in which case, Nokia are allowed to ask for a lot more money: they are charging what the patent cross-license that Apple would otherwise have to do is worth.

Apple has more to lose here

[pydev]

The US market is currently a lost cause for Nokia anyway, and Nokia makes most of its money on low-end phones worldwide. If Apple and Nokia shipments in the US are affected, Apple is in far greater trouble.

Re:Nokia has a good history when it comes to paten

[Weezul]

Apple does not deliver fundamentally new technology like Nokia; well not during the last 10 years anyways, the Newton was new, original Mac was new, etc.

Applie meditates upon existing technology and works out how to present the technology so that the average user will benefit most. Incremental backups like Time Machine have existed forever, ala rsync, but Apple slapping on a gui with a starscape has saved thousands of users from losing irreplaceable data.

Apple will need to pay royalties for the underlying technology they are using. Indeed, they'll owe Nokia massive damages for the past 3 years, possibly exceeding the total value of all iPhone's sold thus far. Nokia was extremely forgiving by offering merely a cross licensing deal.

Or HTTP...

[Kyusaku Natsume]

developed by Tim Bersner Lee on a NeXT computer. Following your "logic", Google, Yahoo, Amazon, eBay and Facebook didn't develop anything of worth.

Re:Or HTTP...

[pydev]

developed by Tim Bersner Lee on a NeXT computer

What difference does it what computer it was developed on? TBL developed WWW and HTTP, lots of companies are using it, no company claims to have invented it, and no company has tried to patent it.

Following your "logic", Google, Yahoo, Amazon, eBay and Facebook didn't develop anything of worth.

Well, obviously they developed something (namely a product) of worth. As does Apple, for that matter: they make decent products.

What you should think about is whether Apple actually deserves credit and exclusivity for the technologies in the iPhone.

I think Apple is gaming the patent system: they are taking whatever they can get away with from others, but creating a maze of iffy patents to hinder their competitors. Great business strategy, great for their investors, but lousy for innovation and the public at large. Other companies are nowhere near as brazen as Apple in this regard.

Re:Or HTTP...

[pydev]

NeXT computer

By the way, for the sources of NeXT's technologies, see above. One has to give credit where credit is due: the guy has taste in what he rips off from others. And that's fine.

Where Jobs and Apple repeatedly have crossed the line is in first taking other people's technologies and then trying to claim exclusivity on it.

Re:Or HTTP...

[pommiekiwifruit]

no company claims to have invented it, and no company has tried to patent it.

British Telecom tried to claim that their patents on Teletext/Prestel covered it. But (quite rightly) failed.

Re:Or HTTP...

[Kyusaku Natsume]

Nokia tried and failed to make a gaming platform, the NGage; Apple released the iPod Touch and iPhone, that are a sucess, to say that only the iPod and the iPhone only succeeded because they had good marketing is ridiculous. A good development environment, a good distribution system for third party developers, a good OS and good compromises in the hardware design helped to make both devices the gold standard in their respective markets. The fact that Nokia wants so badly a cross licensing agreement with Apple is a strong indication that really Apple developed valuable IP.

Re:Nokia has a good history when it comes to paten

[pydev]

Yes, Apple has a long history of abusing patents and copyrights. Go read up on their history. Jobs also attempted to violate the GPL over the Objective-C extensions to gcc.

Re:Nokia has a good history when it comes to paten

[pydev]

Evidence would be nice in an accusation.

That's like asking for evidence that WWII happened. Go read up on Apple corporate history.

Also, I guess he is saying that Apple does not "spend massive amounts of money to research"

Apple used to do research and collaborate with universities, but they stopped in the 1990's.

Today, Apple spends virtually no money on research, as you can see from their non-existent research output (=publications, citations), from their lack of hiring in computer science research, and from their lack of interaction with computer science departments. Furthermore, the iPhone and almost all its fundamental technologies were invented elsewhere.

and is not responsible for shaking up the mobile phone market

They are definitely responsible for that.

and giving more power to the consumer.

With what? Lock-in not only to a carrier but to Apple products as well? By disabling such commonplace technology as tethering? By not allowing me to install software on my phone? By having a crippled Bluetooth implementation that doesn't talk to standard devices? Do tell, what power does an iPhone give me that I didn't have before?

Don't get me wrong: Apple does great product design and their products are decent (if premium priced). And Apple's impact on the industry has often been positive overall by getting other companies out of their ruts. But Apple is not the great innovator or inventor they are made out to be, and they deserve neither the credit nor the monopoly that their fanboys want to give them.

Re:Nokia has a good history when it comes to paten

[aristotle-dude]

Yes, Apple has a long history of abusing patents and copyrights. Go read up on their history. Jobs also attempted to violate the GPL over the Objective-C extensions to gcc.

I don't think you understand how the GPL works. The GPL cannot take away rights from copyright holders. If Apple contributed all of those Objective-C extensions to gcc, they still own the copyright to that code and they can use that code in another project.

The GPL can grant rights to people other than the original authors to use that code in GCC but it does not prevent Apple from using their own code in another product as long as they are not also using code written by someone else in the gcc project without their permission.

Re:Nokia has a good history when it comes to paten

[Kalriath]

Apple does have a track record of playing dirty. Such as when they released a product called "iPhone" when Cisco owned and used the trademark, knowing that their horde of fa... shareholders would cry foul at the big, nasty, scary Cisco rather than the slimy, conniving, sneaky Apple.

Re:Nokia has a good history when it comes to paten

[jscotta44]

Ummmthat was a little used name for a dead product and Cisco happily sold Apple the rights to use the name. How is that playing dirty?

Re:Nokia has a good history when it comes to paten

[jscotta44]

Not enough time to respond to everything. But let's stay on topic

Here is a quote from Apple's 2009 10K filing:

"The Company’s research and development expenditures totaled $1.3 billion, $1.1 billion and $782 million in 2009, 2008 and 2007, respectively."

I guess that a few billion does not quality as research in academic circles, but it does for us corporate types. It would seem that your anecdotal approach to measuring Apple's R&D expenditures is a little offby numerous orders of magnitude.

Re:Nokia has a good history when it comes to paten

[jscotta44]

I'm glad that you are not the judge. And perhaps you should do a little more homework on Apple's patent filings before saying that they don't deliver fundamentally new technology.

Time will tell who has to pay, if anyone.

For large corporations

[rinwod]

For large corporations, the whole purpose of writing patents is so that you can file countersuit when some other large company claims infringement. I have personally had my hand in writing a few extremely worthless patents, but was pushed to do so by my managers (and rewarded for doing so), because it gives us more ammo to fire back at our competitors should they decide to pick a fight. Enzyte Review

First hand legal information

[Krohon]

Here is a link to the real Apple case against Nokia (AAPL-NOKCountersuit): http://www.docstoc.com/docs/19291155/?key=NWQ3MTg2ODAt&pass=ZTY0Yy00OWE4 Of course it is biased towards Apple point of view. Also, the text of the Nokia's suit is needed to fully understand it.

Current U.S. FTC and patent law dictatest that...

[An dochasac]

Apple is trying to stop Nokia from selling phones in the U.S. which seems a little heavy-handed. But I think its struggles against Microsoft taught Apple that either you're a ruthless monopoly and patent troll or you're the kid who gets beat up by one. We might as well admit that U.S. trade law is designed to create domestic monopolies with third-world labor pools. Apple is smart enough to live within that system. It's unfortunate because I don't want to give up my reliable and relatively open Nokia for a locked down iAnything.

Re:Nokia has a good history when it comes to paten

[Daengbo]

And perhaps you should do a little more homework on Apple's patent filings before saying that they don't deliver fundamentally new technology.

Like the patented multi-touch, a twenty year-old technology filed for three years ago??

Re:Nokia has a good history when it comes to paten

[Daengbo]

How much of that technology is for fundamentally new technology, and how much is for trying to get a laptop to fit in a manila envelope?

Re:Nokia has a good history when it comes to paten

[pydev]

I guess that a few billion does not quality as research in academic circles,

That is research and development expenditures.

We can figure out how much of that is spent on research by looking at research output, and that means publications and citations. There are essentially none. That is consistent with the fact that Apple has essentially no research-related jobs in its labs offered (yes, I check).

Logically, either Apple spends all its money on development, or if they spend money on research, it produces no scientific output, which amounts to doing no research as well.

but it does for us corporate types.

I don't know about corporate types in general, but you're either stupid or deliberately obfuscating the issue.

If you want to demonstrate that Apple does have research efforts comparable to other companies, please supply evidence using the relevant metrics (peer reviewed publications, citations, university collaborations, funding through public research grants, Nobel prize winners, etc.).

Don't bother trying to redefine what "research" means; if Apple doesn't score on those metrics, it's not doing "research" by what the world understands by that term.

Re:Nokia has a good history when it comes to paten

[pydev]

WTF does that have to do with anything?

Jobs tried to ship a binary-only version of the gcc-based Objective-C compiler without opening the source code, in violation of the GPL. He complied when the FSF threatened legal action.

Re:Nokia has a good history when it comes to paten

[Daengbo]

I think he's talking about the NeXT libraries, which we can conclude were in violation since they were eventually contributed to GCC as required but never maintained. I don't think he's talking about Clang or anything.

Re:Nokia has a good history when it comes to paten

[jscotta44]

So, in your world, (must be a stupid or obfuscated one), you are only doing research if you are sharing it? Really? Interesting, as much as I dislike the patent system, that would seem to be where most companies show their R&D. Posting it in peer review articles, university collaborations, public research grants is not the only metric.

Sounds to me like someone has a bone to pick with Apple. Maybe Apple turned down your appeal to fund some project you like. Maybe it is even your own academic project and you needed the money to keep going and pay the mortgage?

Re:Nokia has a good history when it comes to paten

[pydev]

So, in your world, (must be a stupid or obfuscated one), you are only doing research if you are sharing it?

In the real world, scientific research is measured in peer reviewed publications, peer reviewed grants, and citations.

Even if Apple had secret internal research and in some bizarro alternate universe that would be called "research" as well, it doesn't change the substance of my statement: Microsoft, Google, IBM, and others are hiring Ph.D.'s to do research, supporting the research community, and contributing scientific results to the field, Apple is largely not, no matter what you call it.

Maybe Apple turned down your appeal to fund some project you like.

Apple doesn't give out grants for computer science research, so how could they turn anybody down?

Sounds to me like someone has a bone to pick with Apple.

Sounds to me like your ego is a bit too wrapped up in Apple. Perhaps you regret dropping out of school and instead ended up as a corporate drone at Apple? Perhaps peddling 1980's technology in stylish boxes isn't all you hoped it would be? Maybe you like to redefine Apple's choice of black-vs-white plastic as "research" because you could never really grasp anything more complicated yourself anyway? Maybe the criticism is hitting a bit too close to home for you? Just a thought... in your spirit.

Re:Nokia has a good history when it comes to paten

[jscotta44]

Aha frustrated professor (either real or in your mind). Your comments give you away. Look for a real job. And, no, I don't work for Apple or any company that benefits from them. Not do I have or ever had any stock in Apple (or any related company). I simply took exception to your obviously biased comments and the axe you had to grind. Thank you for showing your hand. You can be dismissed now.

Re:Nokia has a good history when it comes to paten

[pydev]

And, no, I don't work for Apple or any company that benefits from them. Not do I have or ever had any stock in Apple (or any related company).

Based on your id, you were a retail manager for nearly two decades, four years of that at Apple. You must have received Apple stock options. For many years, your job was to sell the Apple brand.

I simply took exception to your obviously biased comments and the axe you had to grind.

There's nothing biased about it; the facts are easy enough for anybody to verify. By standard measures of research output, Apple does not engage in research. Compared to other companies, their hiring of Ph.D. level researchers, sponsorship of academic research, and participation in research grants is also essentially non-existent.

If you disagree with these statements, prove me wrong with facts and numbers and drop the lies and ad hominems.

Despite your hatred of academia, you realize that students and faculty are really important for Apple, and that's why you keep trying to spin the facts.

Blocking imports? Really?

[DaVince21]

That's pretty damn foul from Apple. Do they fear competition that much?

Re:Nokia has a good history when it comes to paten

[dpastern]

That's because Apple is a CUNT of a company. The sooner they go bust, the better. Litiguous bastards, I HATE Apple.

Dave

You're missing the point.

[CountBrass]

Apple's complaint is that Nokia have *not* been offering them the same terms that they offer to other 'phone makers. Other 'phone makers pay Nokia cash (which Apple says they are willing to do) but Nokia wants Apple to hand-over some of their licenses (which Apple says violates the rules and they're being offered a different deal from everyone else).

Nokia patent trolls?

[CountBrass]

Reading this thread the only people I see making any mention of Nokia being patent trolls are ones like the parent (mjwx) who put those words into the mouths of so-called 'Apple fan boys'. Bit desperate when you have to create a strawman isn't it?

Childish posts like the parent make me laugh.

[CountBrass]

Do they really think this is some fight to the death? Why do these fanboys even care? It's a dispute between two businesses that will be resolved at some point. Both businesses will carry on both before and after it's resolved.

Re:Nokia has a good history when it comes to paten

[surfslasher]

LOL... I like how you make up stuff as you go when you say: "Today, Apple spends virtually no money on research, as you can see from their non-existent research output (=publications, citations), from their lack of hiring in computer science research, and from their lack of interaction with computer science departments. Furthermore, the iPhone and almost all its fundamental technologies were invented elsewhere."

prove me wrong

[pydev]

LOL... I like how you make up stuff as you go when you say:

If it's so funny, you should have plenty of counterexamples, so prove me wrong. A company the size of Apple should have a few hundred tech reports and publications every year, a web site and program where academic groups can apply for grant funding, and a few publicly funded research grants sites where they are listed as participants. I can't find any. If you can, just provide the URLs; I'm genuinely interested.

Furthermore, the iPhone and almost all its fundamental technologies were invented elsewhere.

Same thing, if I'm wrong, it should be easy enough for you to point to specific examples and URLs.

(surfslasher=jscotta44?)

Re:Nokia has a good history when it comes to paten

[Kalriath]

No, Cisco did not "happily sell Apple the rights". Cisco did not accept Apple's terms, and Apple just announced their product with the name anyway to force Cisco into accepting their terms. That's the very definition of playing dirty. Also, there was a product in production and being sold called the iPhone. Some VoIP product I think.

Of course, Apple has the ability to bend time and space to rewrite history, as evidenced by your comment.

Re:Nokia has a good history when it comes to paten

[jscotta44]

Just how did Apple force Cisco to accept their terms? Cisco was certainly no small company then (or now for that matter). If Cisco thought it would have been more profitable to keep their ownership of the name, then I do not doubt that they could have done just that. But rather than stick with a failing product, they saw a way to recoup some money by selling the rights to the name to Apple. Standard business practice.

If Cisco had not wanted to sell the name, there is nothing Apple could have done to force them to do so. Who is trying to rewrite history here?