Apple vs. Nokia vs. Google vs. HTC

Lanxon writes "Wired has published a lengthy investigation into the litigation underway among some of the world's biggest cell phone manufacturers, and what it means for the industry of patent lawsuits and patent squatting. 'According to a 2009 report by PricewaterhouseCoopers, from 1995 to 2008 non-practising entities [patent trolls] have been awarded damages that are, on average, more than double those for practising entities. Consider Research In Motion's 2006 payout of over $612 million to Virginia-based patent-holding company NTP, to avoid its BlackBerry network being shut down in the US. As part of the settlement, NTP granted RIM a licence to use its patented technology; it has subsequently filed lawsuits against AT&T, Sprint Nextel, T-Mobile, and Verizon.'"

Comments

Hardly a mexican standoff

[dgr73]

The article describes the Nokia Apple patent suit/countersuit situation as a mexican standoff. This has been discussed ad nauseum already here on slashdot and I think it's hardly that. Unless you call one person pointing a water pistol and another aiming a cannon a mexican standoff.

Assuming both sides claims are deemed to have merit and both refuse to pay licensing fees, Nokia has to think of another implementation for some GUI elements, hardly a gargantuan task. However, if Nokia wins, Apple has to reinvent mobile technology, then get all the networks to support their new implementation.

but that's not the *big* problem

[ciaran_o_riordan]

Patent trolls are a problem for big companies that have lots of money. Trolls have nothing to do with HTML5 not being able to recommend a video codec, and they've nothing to do with worries about how Microsoft will use their patents on .doc, XML, or Mono. Some trolls *do* practice their invention, like the mp3 guys that made a packet from trolling - and as a side-effect, completely insignificant to them, forced GNU/Linux distros to omit mp3 support.

To solve the social problems caused by software patents, we have to abolish them - tweaking the numbers to reduce the problems of mega corporations is not *our* job.

• Patent trolls
• Harm with neither litigation nor threats
• Apple v. HTC (2010, USA)