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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.
vi ~/.emacs # I'm probably going to Hell for this.
After being screwed by Microsoft in the past, it's pretty obvious why Apple is so aggressive nowadays. It's taking taking some pages from Microsoft.
I am with Nokia because they're quite nice with Qt and they are definitely rightly responsible for a lot of technology that no doubt Apple just implemented without permission. I think the fact that about 40 firms* paying royalties is evidence enough.
I will not buy an iPhone and never will be part of that monopoly. iPods, iPhones are engineered to fail and you paying ~£30 for the privilege to do very little.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8321058.stm
Slashdot needs Geekcode | Can anyone recommend any good SCIFI? My tastes: Foundation, Startide Rising, CITY, Ringworld,
As long as there is profit in suing for such things, a lot of companies will keep doing it. After a few decades of stealing from each other, software and hardware companies are waking up, looking around and realizing there is money to be made from suing each other for practices they have all engaged in... damn near all the patent infringement lawsuits I have read about seem on the surface, to be frivolous... it really is time for patent reform
The patents for tip-and-ring landlines expired long ago. There was a fight, even then.
According TFA, this also about GSM, UTMS, and WiFI-- and Nokia has intellectual property claims in all three; and those are what the litigation against Apple is all about.
Let's see: cells and wireless. No, not about phones. Bridging GSM lines for data... no, not about phones. WiFi switch-off.... no, not about phones again.
Not about software either. Hmmmm.
This doesn't speak to Bilski, this doesn't have anything to do with that. This, notwithstanding to the madness of patents in general.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
Multi-touch has been invented many times. It was even publicly documented in 1985:Multi-touch prior art.
Please help publicise swpat.org - the software patents wiki
But Nokia wanted more from Apple for these patents than they did from anyone else.
Really? So, exactly how much did Nokia want from Apple?
And exactly how much did the other licensees pay?
Deleted
Apple has a rather unusual model to sell its phone: From what we've heard Apple demands not only a one-time sales price from the operators (as most other mobile manufacturers do) but also a part of the monthly fee paid by iphone-customers. If Nokia licenses its patents for a percentage of the sales price (a common practice) they could also have asked for a percentage of the monthly fee (and justly so, if you ask me, as Apple just spreads out the sales price over a longer period of time). Apple on the other side might object to being the only GSM-manufacturer that has to pay a monthly fee.
Legal Alchemy? iPad Magic?
Is this Cupertino we're talking about or Hogwarts?
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
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
jefferson as in thomas jefferson
It has been pretended by some that inventors have a natural and exclusive right to their inventions, and not merely for their own lives, but inheritable to their heirs. But while it is a moot question whether the origin of any kind of property is derived from nature at all, it would be singular to admit a natural and even an hereditary right to inventors. It is agreed by those who have seriously considered the subject, that no individual has, of natural right, a separate property in an acre of land, for instance. By an universal law, indeed, whatever, whether fixed or movable, belongs to all men equally and in common, is the property for the moment of him who occupies it, but when he relinquishes the occupation, the property goes with it. Stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of society. It would be curious then, if an idea, the fugitive fermentation of an individual brain, could, of natural right, be claimed in exclusive and stable property. If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property. Society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility, but this may or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from anybody. Accordingly, it is a fact, as far as I am informed, that England was, until we copied her, the only country on earth which ever, by a general law, gave a legal right to the exclusive use of an idea. In some other countries it is sometimes done, in a great case, and by a special and personal act, but, generally speaking, other nations have thought that these monopolies produce more embarrassment than advantage to society; and it may be observed that the nations which refuse monopolies of invention, are as fruitful as England in new and useful devices.
he basically says patents are bullshit.
Read radical news here
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.
If Apple wants to use GSM hardware, Nokia is obliged to licence it to them under RAND terms. RAND is not an organisation (in this sense, although there is a non-profit called "the RAND corporation", but it has nothing whatsoever to do with this) it means Reasonable And Non-Discriminatory licensing; which applies to the GSM patents Nokia holds. They are required to licence them fairly and equally to anyone who wants to use them, in exchange for the patents being part of the standard for cellular communication.
Apple doesn't need to be part of anything to be able to licence the patents. You could set up your own mobile phone company in your basement and Nokia would be obliged to licence the patents to you too - at the same rate that everyone pays to use them.
Now, someone else may have more recent information that contradicts this, but...
My understanding was that Apple tried to license these patents from Nokia. They are part of the GSM specification, which no GSM phone can function without. Because they are part of the standard, they must be licensed under Reasonable And Non-Discriminatory terms.
But Nokia wanted more from Apple for these patents than they did from anyone else.
What, exactly? I don't know. Either the articles I've read didn't say, or I've since forgotten. I think it was cross-licensing with some of the specific patents on the iPhone, but as I say, I'm not sure.
Either way, if Nokia isn't licensing the original patents under RAND terms to Apple, then they should be burned to hell and back for this. They knew the price when they put patents of theirs into the GSM spec, and now they have to live with it.
So, let me see if I got this right:
You don't know WHAT Nokia wanted from Apple, but you KNOW that Nokia didn't license the original patents under RAND terms?
I am sorry - could you try to explain this to me again? You know that Nokia wouldn't give Apple the patents under RAND terms, but you don't know what Nokia was asking for?
I am at the point where I am annoyed more by Apple appologists than by biggest Microsoft fans.
And that is really really hard to achieve...
You linked to the general definition of RAND. There's nothing in the definition that precludes some form of "limited RAND", where the terms are only applied to a members of a specific group, and not outside of it.
In any case, every time this Nokia vs Apple topic is raised on Slashdot, I see this very same exchange about RAND. However, neither the side that claims GSM is RAND-licensed to everyone, nor the side which claims some kind of "limited RAND", have offered any definite sources. I've tried to find it on GSM Association website on my own, but wasn't successful.
Until then, both yours and GP's claims are just speculation, and the actual licensing terms for GSM specs, and how they apply to this situation, are unclear.
Your post may not be trolling but it is definitely incorrect.
RAND only covers specific patents, Apple is trying to use RAND to get access to Nokia's entire patent portfolio including those covered by RAND. RAND exists to prevent one patent holder from prohibiting entry into the market by refusing to license patents relating to the GSM standards, this does not cover all of Nokia's patents.
Apple is only being asked to pay what other manufactures are paying, it is just that Apple has not got a large enough or valuable enough patent portfolio to make cross licensing an attractive or even fair deal for Nokia. Apple is not the only manufacturer that has been asked to pay cash to use Nokia's patents, they are just the only one who thinks they don't have to.
However your reply is a troll, you were incorrect and that does not constitute an anti-Apple conspiracy.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.