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Nokia Claims Apple Does "Legal Alchemy" To Mask IP Theft
CWmike writes "Nokia asked a federal judge last week to toss out Apple's antitrust claims, saying the iPhone maker indulged in 'legal alchemy' when it tried to divert attention from its infringement of Nokia's intellectual property. The filing was the latest salvo in a battle that began in October 2009 when handset maker Nokia sued Apple, saying the iPhone infringed on 10 of its patents, and that Apple was trying 'to get a free ride on the back of Nokia's innovation.' Apple countered in December with a lawsuit of its own that not only claimed Nokia infringed 13 of its patents, but that Nokia also violated antitrust law by legally attacking Apple after it declined to pay what it called 'exorbitant royalties' and refused to give Nokia access to iPhone patents. 'These non-patent counterclaims are designed to divert attention away from free-riding off of Nokia's intellectual property, a practice Apple evidently believes should only be of paramount concern when it is the alleged victim,' Nokia charged in the motion. Apple is on a legal roll, having also recently sued the maker of Google's Nexus One, HTC, for patent infringement."
Hopefully the Bilski decision will come out and invalidate software patents. Then these companies can get back to competing on innovation.
Note that the patents Nokia are using against Apple are not Software patents, but real technology patents. The fact that Apple has nothing but software patents to respond with is a signal about how fragile Apple in fact is, with no real "valuable" intellectual property.
RAND terms only applied IF you developed and contributed to the standard.
RAND terms SPECIFICALLY EXCLUDED everyone who came along afterwards and wanted to use / licence GSM.
Apple DID NOT help develop GSM.
Apple REFUSED to accept non-RAND GSM licencing terms.
These are the facts. These are ALL the facts.
http://slashdot.org/~GuyFawkes/journal
You keep posting these 'facts' about cross-licensing. You're basically wrong. RTF Filing. From Statement of facts, p 4-5
In late 2007, Apple and Nokia began negotiating a potential license agreement for Nokia's patents essential to the ETSI standards (id. 86). Apple admits that, at the start of the negotiations, and again in September 2009, Nokia offered license terms to Nokia's essential patents that did not require Apple to grant any license back to Apple's non-essential patents (id. 86, 91).3 Apple acknowledges its rejection of Nokia's "standard" license terms (id. 85, 91, 92). Apple's unhappiness about these offers seems only to be that Nokia was asking for what Apple considered too much money for Nokia's essential patents (see id. 91).
Apple also admits that "Nokia defined both a portfolio rate and an average per patent royalty rate" that did not require any
license-back of non-essential patents (id. Answer to 44). Once again, Apple's only problem with these offers is the amount of money involved (id. 91).
Again, according to Nokia's filing, there was an offer to cross-license, but it was Apple that first made it.
Apple further admits that it was willing to grant Nokia a cross-license to certain Apple patents that are not claimed to be essential to any of the standards listed above (id. 87). Apple avers that, in Spring 2008, Nokia made another license offer, proposing Apple expand its prior offer to give Nokia the right to pick a limited number of Apple non-essential patents that would be licensed (id. 89). Apple states that it rejected the proposal (id.).
But hey, don't let facts get in the way of righteous anger.
RAND terms only applied IF you developed and contributed to the standard.
Um, wrong much?
From everyone's favorite source:
"companies agree that if they receive any patents on technologies which become essential to the standard then they agree to allow other groups attempting to implement the standard to use those patents and they agree that the charges for those patents shall be reasonable"
There is absolutely nothing involved in being part of the standards body to receive RAND terms. If you're part of the standards body you have to extend RAND terms.
I don't know what kind of crack I was on, but I suspect it was decaf.
By RAND terms - in exchange for the GSM patents being included in the standard for cellular communication, Nokia agreed to licence them under RAND terms. Otherwise, they would not have been included in the standard: it's a way to ensure that there is still profit in allowing others to use your work, and enable a standard (which is handy for a large radio communication network)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_and_Non_Discriminatory_Licensing
Read the wiki page - it even uses the GSM patents themselves as an example. Bonus.
It has nothing to do with licensing copies of Windows, which are not covered by RAND conditions.