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Nokia Sues HTC, RIM and Viewsonic
angry tapir writes "Nokia has filed claims in the U.S. and Germany saying that products from HTC, Research In Motion (RIM) and ViewSonic infringe a number of the company's patents. Nokia has filed actions against all three companies in Mannheim's and Munich's respective regional courts. Nokia has also filed complaints against HTC before the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC), the Federal District Court of Delaware and the regional court in Düsseldorf. RIM will also have to dispatch its lawyers to Düsseldorf for a Nokia lawsuit filed there, while ViewSonic's legal team have to defend the company against a suit in Delaware."
What's new?
...not only that, the business of companies taking each other to court over patents is becoming the norm and as such, increasingly stale (as news)...in my opinion.
Something to supplement Nokia's coffers after Elop's non-starter with Windows Phone, eh?
I can't keep track of all these lawsuits anymore. I just keep picturing an image of the globe with thousands of missile tracks as the world's tech companies try to obliterate each other with patents.
Not Apple? I see this as good evidence that Nokia is completely controlled by Microsoft.
I don't know what has gone on behind the scenes to get Microsoft and Apple to luv each other, but it seems like there is no rational reason for Nokia to leave Apple out of the fun except that they have been commanded to do so by Microsoft.
So Apple & Microsoft, what is your plan for the post-Android world you are trying to create?
Microsoft cannot sue Android makers directly, because they all already paying Microsoft for the bogo patents. But since MS essentially owns Nokia, Microsoft gets to double dip.
Before you know it there wont be any cell phones in all of Europe. When Europeans have to switch to landlines you can bet something will give.
That or the companies will form consortorums because it helps all interests. This is how the industry use to do things and even the mobfia has them. Al Carpone even said its not worth it to be dead if we all just want to make money. Its best to not go to war.
http://saveie6.com/
I can understand HTC and RIM... but all Viewsonic has is an Android tablet that does not have 3G.
The defendants just need to drag this case out a few years longer. NOK prices will be so low, these companies can just pool some resources together. Maybe about $200 each, and buy out NOK altogether.
NOK is dead and this is just their last attempt at being relevant.
if you can't compete, litigate!
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Imitate
Innovate
Litigate
Disintegrate
me too!
The company is substituting aggression under the law for
competency in the marketplace.
This serves no one but the lawyers involved.
And it is some pathetic shit.
Embrace death, you sorry Nokia fucktards. It will embrace you.
But seriously when? At what point will governments wake up and realize that the patent system is paralyzing entire industries? How bad does it have to get? Maybe someone should set up an NPE to sue Congress, in the hope that it will wake-them-the-hell-up.
SUE EVERYONE!
Can't compete? Litigate!
If you can't innovate, litigate.
This is the results of Apple's attempt to win in the courts rather than the marketplace.
When Steve Jobs said he would "go nuclear" to stop other companies from making tablet computers, he failed to understand every other corporation out there is also armed.
That's why sometimes it's so difficult for me to believe Steve Jobs had anything more than a hipster's level understanding of Buddhism. This stuff is beginner's level Karma knowledge- you reap what you sow.
As of this moment, we are cruising at an altitude of $3.50 as you can see by the NYSE price.
I have been instructed by the parent carrier to initiate a controlled flight into terrain so that it can pick up the pieces and glue them onto itself. You, the investors, are expendable.
Please enjoy your brief flight on MicroNokia Airways.
You are free to move about the cabin.
--
BMO
Although the following interactive graph is kinda outdated, it still illustrate the mess ---
http://bl.ocks.org/1153292
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
It was only a week or two ago when it was announced that Nokia are no longer the number one seller of handsets on earth. It's going down at an accelerating rate and not up.
Nokia is very much alive (notice the bit above where I mentioned it was the number one seller of handsets) despite a lot of internal effort to kill it. The core problem is currently Elop, there are other problems but he's putting in no effort to fix them and busy getting rid of anyone that can. Even then it will take a long time to kill Nokia even if it's a deliberate effort.
When you can't compete on the market, be a litigious patent whore.
The compensation money will make your corporate results report card look less embarrassing.
Remember the Creative vs Apple patent lawsuit for mp3 players back in 2006?
----
Nokia is in serious trouble now.
Samsung has overtaken Nokia
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/cell-phones/nokia-loses-global-cellphone-lead-to-samsung-for-first-time-since-1998/7484
Nokia is bleeding money, and trojan horse CEO is feigning ignorance
http://www.industryweek.com/articles/nokia_loses_1-2_billion_in_q1_27168.aspx
Nokia is an old time innnovator and a big player in the industry. No way can they be called a patent troll. Conversely HTC, viewsonic have a bussiness model of fast followers and copying, respectively. Viewsonic is not an innovator just a cheapenator. they rarely even make their own stuff. HTC simply adds fashion to existing tech. I can't really say much about rimm. They definitely innovated in the field but they are desperately trying to catch up hardware wise. So it depends what the patents are.
I have little doubt they have a case since they had a case against apple on basic ideas in how to conduct cell phone operations. Apple settled or at least cross licencenced.
Finally this is obviously not an attempt to black mail these companies. Their market share is miniscule. Instead, Nokia needs cash flow so they are going after places they know they can win but ignored when they had bigger fish to fry.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
>God, these lame armchair analyst zealots get on my nerves.
We all know what's happening.
Elop is sabotaging the company, he and the board will get golden parachutes, and get hired by Microsoft, and the remains of the company will be acquired by Microsoft.
It's been plain ever since Microsoft "bought without buying" Nokia by having Elop installed as Cuckoo CEO.
Deal with it.
Go be butthurt somewhere else.
--
BMO
Okay, so tell me how Microsoft got Elop installed as the Nokia CEO.
Please be as detailed as possible.
This space for rent.
>Okay, so tell me how Microsoft got Elop installed as the Nokia CEO
Microsoft promised a pile of cash and handed it over after he got hired.
Or are you totally ignorant of the history regarding this?
--
BMO
>Microsoft promised a pile of cash and handed it over after he got hired.
To whom?
>Or are you totally ignorant of the history regarding this?
Enlighten me. Any references will be well appreciated.
This space for rent.
You know what, I'm going to drop this here, because google is --->over there.
Google "microsoft pays nokia 1 billion"
Pick any of the news stories.
You're an ass /and/ a shill.
--
BMO
Wait, so Microsoft promised Nokia to pay them $1 billion dollars a year to destroy itself with a shill CEO and Nokia took up that offer which will cost it much than a few billion dollars? A company whose market cap was ~$150 billion in 2007.
What are you smoking? You think the Finnish government will let that happen to their biggest company and employer?
I am interested in hearing your thoughts on this.
>You're an ass /and/ a shill.
I may be an ass only to you because you bring out the worst in me with your wrongful shill accusations.
This space for rent.
So Microsoft pulled their old trick of paying in "free" licenses again. On top of that given the performance of WP so far, they are giving Nokia almost worthless licenses.
... those who can't, litigate.
The only 2 companies with the money and the level of disconnect to directly initiate fights in this war are more or less apple and Microsoft. In general other then those 2 companies (and a bit of sony, but that's small potatoes by comparison) the companies that were actually making phones before the smartphone patent war mess, in general wanted to avoid a patent war and actually try to win by making a better phone. Heck if I recall at one point it was more or less a cease fire before microsoft made 2 anouncements within 2 hours of eachother. Anouncement 1: Microsoft will cover legal fees for windows phones if a patent suit arises, and a few hours later, microsoft anounced the start of their suing people making android manufactures in the start of the lawsuits that lead to the $15 payment for every android that sells.
They only needed to pay off a few key quislings, the net worth of the company is irrelevant.
You think they can do anything about it? Protectionism is not looked on favourably by the EU or the WTO.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Hah, I think there's a better airplane analogy: the pilot is trying to control a stalled airplane, while ignorant onlookers are judging his skill by what altitude and the rate of descent the plane has at the moment.
See, just before the wings stalled, the airplane was gaining altitude. People ignorant about flight dynamics may think this means everything was going OK, but the engine thrust was set too low for that angle of attack and the plane was dangerously losing speed. When the stall warning sounded in the cockpit, the captain woke up from his nap and took control from the dumbass co-pilot, but too late: the plane started to plunge uncontrollably. The captain promptly put the stick down (see, he's trying to kill everyone on board!) and increased engine thrust. In the recent minute, the plane has lost another 1000 feet of altitude and still descends; the recovery is uncertain. And it's all captain's fault, because the fall happened while he was in control!
The thing about financial analysts is, they know jack shit about any specific market, especially so in technologically-intensive areas, so all they are left with to make their crystal ball projections are pure financial data. These tell nothing about where things are going, whether the company is gaining or losing mindshare among consumers and developers. In 1997, the financial press spelled doom for Apple and their stock was tumbling below $3.
My exception safety is -fno-exceptions.
My time on the internet taught me to interpret "google this" as "I have nothing to back up my claims, but I still want to sound authoritative".
What actually happened is, the board decided to oust Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo and install Stephen Elop, because things were going to hell fast. If he is Microsoft's trojan horse as the conspiracy theorists here like to assert, the board should be blamed for not seeing this. But something tells me that they have better grip on the company's prospects than a legion of Slashdot neckbeards.
My exception safety is -fno-exceptions.
Yeah, no, the captain noticed they were heading for Europe, said "I hate them froggies. We're heading back to good ol' Texas where I grew up," and promptly started accelerating in the opposite direction. You know, metaphorically speaking.
But something tells me that they have better grip on the company's prospects than a legion of Slashdot neckbeards.
Maybe, maybe not. Sometimes people can be too close.
They had a failing platform. So they hired a top-level guy from a company proven incompetent in the mobile field, who promptly climbed into bed with his former company. Doesn't really sound like a winning strategy to me, but perhaps Elop really is a visionary who used to roam the halls of Microsoft, telling anyone who would listen 'The iPhone is going to kill us!'.
Why do I keep having children making noise at me? Here's what happens nearly every time a new CEO arrives anywhere - an announcement of - "everything you've been doing is wrong but I'm here to fix it all up". The new CEO then pisses on some things to mark territory and starts new things to give some impression that change is happening, but the constant is disparaging things that came before.
I've heard the "failure" speech several times - once from a loser that later went on to set things up so that Auckland was blacked out for six weeks due to the guys that could have fixed it earlier being out of a job, and another time from a CEO that was marched out by security less than three months later (and had the same thing done to him at another place two years later).
It's bullshit peddled to the naive.
What is very clear now is that after a year things are going down the tubes far more quickly than before Elop was there.
What appears to be happening is, forgive the analogy, that Elop has taken on a leaky boat, picked up an axe, cut holes in the bottom, and thrown the guys that were patching the leak overboard. You don't expand by shedding staff.
How quickly Nokia went from top of the heap to a patent troll under the bridge! Just four years ago I owned a Nokia smartphone and they were the market leader. Oh how the mighty have fallen!
> You think the Finnish government will let that happen to their biggest company and employer?
It's not that big an employer here, and not much ownership left in the country. Its GDP share was 1.6% in 2009.
And there isn't much the government could do, anyway.
Grip? They couldn't grip their own asses if you gave them a diagram.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/28/us-nokia-idUSBRE83Q0W620120428
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Grip? They couldn't grip their own asses if you gave them a diagram.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/28/us-nokia-idUSBRE83Q0W620120428
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
You think Nokia's board is dumb not to fire Elop if he's not acting in Nokia's best interests?
Why not? Plenty of other boards seem to be. And what happens when they do finally wise up? They send him flying on a golden parachute.
S&P and others have finally realized the size of the hole that Nokia has dug itself into over the last 5 years. If they knew shit about mobile technology, they'd give Nokia junk investment status in 2010. But they only seem to react to quarterly reports, which result in a lag.
My exception safety is -fno-exceptions.
WTF. I never in a million years would have imagined the new patent gladiator field would be germany. Sad.
Assuming you're a believer in capitalism and free markets, you should be thrilled to encourage and protect "cheapenators" the world over. God bless them. They're the reason the system works. The more the merrier!
What we have these days, unfortunately, are a bunch of lazy communists who think that their business should get special protections instead of having to compete, which is just so hard for the poor widdle baby CEOs. Their mommy told them they were entitled to fat profit margins on their work ("innovating is so expensive!"), and if some upstart can out-compete them on price, it's just... not... fair!!!!!
So they spend their time coming up with ways to change the rules of the free market so as to make it less free. Never mind that they themselves only got where they are today by using the ideas of others. Now they've got theirs, and they want to make sure no one else can ever take it.
These are the guys whining about how the "cheapenators" stole their precious ideas, and we all need to band together to make sure that precious "intellectual property" can't be "stolen" from the monopoly- I mean, inventor. Instead of competing, they spend their time suing and lobbying, trying to gradually expand the scope of copyright, patents (i.e. creating "software patents"), and other protectionist schemes.
It is anti-capitalist. It's a plot by people who want to change the US to have an institutionalized wealthy upper class, whose status is protected by laws and handed down family lines through generations, like they have in Asia. And they know it's so repugnant they have to do it very gradually. For that matter, deep down they may even know it's economically counterproductive. So there's an element of denial about it thrown in as well. So right now it's just policy ideas (like strengthening "IP") that just so happen to have this effect.
Tired of Political Trolls? Opt Out!
Stick to 3310
While I get that people on here don't generally like these litigation stories, I'm genuinely surprised to see the level of some of the Nokia hatred on display here (I'm not referring ti the parent post in particular, just commenting on the thread as a whole). I dunno, maybe it's because Slashdot's a US site, and (at least in a broad sense), Nokia never really understood the US market, & the US market never really understood Nokia?
The really sad thing here is that they could have indeed competed. Nokia has (and probably still do) make some fantastic hardware. For clear evidence of innovation, just Google for "Nokia Communicator". Yup, this was a full, web-enabled smartphone with a proper keyboard, on sale back when a lot of people in the US were still using pagers. Some of their mid-life software was iffy, but they subsequently had good, solid Linux-based OSes, which were more open than any of the currently popular ones (Android included), and when they purchased QT, it looked like they were going to be able to produce a new generation of polished, well-developed products that'd be easy for developers to work with. The N900 is still much loved by many on Slashdot.
Unfortunately, long-term inter-departmental politics and the lack of a strong, focused leadership meant that the company kept pulling itself in half a dozen directions at once. Some of this was probably due to the more-collaborative, less-aggressive-than-the-Americans Finnish way of doing business. When they finally realized that leadership was the issue, the company jumped out of the frying pan and into the fire by appointing a MS Trojan horse as the CEO. They're not the first company to make the mistake of jumping into bed with MS during a panic attack, and they (sadly) probably won't be the last.
As a longtime Communicator owner (and yup, I bought 'em off-contract, but us Nokia fans are probably not shouty enough to be called "fanboys") I just think it's a real shame that a company that produced so many great products and innovations has found itself in the current situation. Even in the current circumstances, they're innovating (see their new 41 megapixel camera phone for evidence of this). I just hope that the US marketspotters are (as usual) painting a more negative picture of Nokia's current situation than reality.
It just needs a little triangular vector ship that shoots apart the links and steals the nodes.
Or scary spiders that crawl out of the holes and climb up the web.
Be sure to remember to cut me in when you get $$$$ (that's four dollar signs) for the game.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
sniffs eerily similar to SCO
And you get a lawsuit! And you get a lawsuit!