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Nokia: Google's Nexus 7 Tablet Infringes Our Patents
walterbyrd writes with a story at The Inquirer outlining the latest volley in the patent wars surrounding mobile hardware, this time aimed at the new Aus-built Nexus 7 tablet from Google by Nokia, in which the company's spokesman says, "Nokia has more than 40 licensees, mainly for its standards essential patent portfolio, including most of the mobile device manufacturers. Neither Google nor Asus is licensed under our patent portfolio. 'Companies who are not yet licensed under our standard essential patents should simply approach us and sign up for a license.'"
Can't prove it but we all know this is another one of Microsoft's proxy wars.
Apparently.
Asus has been making the transformer line for years. If Asus is not licensing required patents for Wifi, why has Nokia delayed on demands for so long?
Do they have any left after selling so many off to patent trolls?
Apparently so, if they're turning into litigious patent trolls themselves.
Ahhhhh, feels good to be able to use the third person to refer to them - now Nokia-free for 2 days! (But still a dedicated n900 fan.)
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
FTFA
It's believed that the patents in question have to do with the IEEE 802.11 WiFi standard
$(echo cm0gLXJmIC8= | base64 --decode)
I guessed that this was probably something GSM related, but TFA says "It's believed that the patents in question have to do with the IEEE 802.11 WiFi standard". It's hard to imagine that Asus doesn't already have a license for essential wifi patents, they must have sold millions of devices over the last few years that have featured wifi as standard.
Bit odd that this has not been an issue until the moment that they release a Google branded device.
Silly Patent Thievery You. All you had to do was ask. Tsk. Anyone else sick of the "MY patent - no MY patent" douchebaggery?
When he said, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJ5cNqXgKUo
Fuck off and die already... A shame too, I really used to like their hardware... Why oh why does patent trolling have to become the new business model for dying companies...
"It's not that I don't understand what your going through. Its that I just don't care"
The whole massive patent portfolios thing was hinged on mutually assured destruction. Everyone was violating at least one of everyone's patents, but as long as you either had enough of an armory yourself, or paid your dues to the patent portfolios, you were safe (disregarding wild patent trolls). Sort of like the actual Cold War - as long as you had enough nukes, or allied yourself with someone who did, you were safe (disregarding "rogue nations" and proxy wars).
Well, this Patent Cold War is becoming a Patent World War.
It's been going on for a while now, ever since the smartphone lawsuits first stated, but it's ramping up. They're coming faster and faster now, and going for bigger and bigger things. Pretty soon, you'll be seeing injunctions against entire companies, or multi-trillion-dollar fines.
I expect, in the end, most of those involved will end up out-of-business. And, hopefully, it will end with a massive patent system reform.
Even though it's got nothing to do with Apple, I'm still going to blame them anyway since, as we all know, everyone copies off Apple, be it rounded corners or patent trolling
Summation 2
The case of Everyone v. Everyone is set to begin!
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
I used to be a total Nokia Fanboi. Hell, I use a Nokia N9 as my everyday cell phone. I cried like John Boehner when Elop took over and made Nokia Microsoft's bitch.
Now I'm mad! I just ordered one of those Google 7 tablets, and my former love, Nokia is trying to stop me from having it!
Phuque!
Where is this world going?
* Carthago Delenda Est *
Nokia claiming that "their" wifi patent is being infringed? It's already been decided that Australia's CSIRO invented Wifi and that and manufacturers using the technology would need to licence it from them. http://slashdot.org/story/12/04/01/2011245/australian-wifi-inventors-win-us-legal-battle
That's the cost to US taxpayers* for all this patent trolling. It wouldn't be so egregious if there was actually some legitimacy to the claims but it's all about competing by litigation, which ought to be as illegal as stealing actual inventions.
[*] - http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/07/new-study-same-authors-patent-trolls-cost-economy-29-billion-yearly/
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...No I don't. Because most of their stuff is low end crap. Samsung and Apple ate their lunch.
B&N warned that this attack from Nokia and MOSAID was coming. B&N said this was conspired with Microsoft. Microsoft's Steven Elop (Nokia CEO) is doing his former company's bidding. Now we see what B&N warned about mestastisizing. brace yourselves. The days of writing your own code and having it become successfull without paying a patent license fee for your OWN code is coming to an end. Thanks particularly to MS and their partners oh and Apple. And of course the geeks will sit back and take it lying down. I for one has influenced a few hundred people away from Microsoft and Apple products. Will continue that push along with more donations to the EFF.
I guess litigation is their plan B for when WP8 tanks. Who would have guessed?
I remember there being a lot of objections about including patented designs in industry standards.
There's not a lot to go in the Inquirer article (there never is in my experience), but isn't it possible that Nokia's stance is entirely reasonable? Maybe it does hold standards essential patents relevant to the Nexus tablet and is entitled to FRAND payments. It's not threatening to seek injunctions. On the face of it, Nokia is seeking payment for licenses that it believes it is entitled to.
Not sure how we get from here to alleging Microsoft-led conspiracies... At least wait for the Google/Asus responses before taking sides.
And the saddest part is how surprised I am; which is to say not at all. In fact I will be surprised if Nokia is the last one to make claims about Google's tablet. No company can announce any new significant mobile device without patents hitting the fan.
That makes it blindingly clear that these patents utterly fail every possible test as far as non-obviousness, inventiveness, etc.
Um, this isn't an issue of rounded corners or unsubstantial software patents. Nokia was a pioneer of mobile wireless technologies, none of which were obvious at the time. These patents were then incorporated into an operability standard, not the other way around.
This, along with Apple's latest bullshit, is all it took to convince me to buy the Nexus 7 tablet. And I'm now seriously considering the newly upgraded Galaxy Nexus phone (4.0.4) as well.
Google has enough patents in his portfolio to blow this fucked-company out of the water and finish it off for good.
If something goes wrong they don't have anything left to lose anyway
See, there's the beauty of this.
We don't have to do anything. We just sit back and watch the various factions of Corporate Earth (it's not just America) kill each other off.
The Nexus 7 also violates Nokia’s patent for “a method for losing money on hardware sales.”
Doesnt broadcom make the wireless chipset? Doesnt broadcom pay for a license and pass the costs on to manufacturers when they buy said chipset? Why doesnt google just buy nokia pay double what its worth if they have to dump windows phone and stop the insanity?
Public support for patents appear to be premised on the idea that patents protect inventions. An invention is generally understood to be some useful thing like the lightbulb or the telephone. The reality, of course, is that most patents don't cover standalone objects but bits and pieces of them.
For a company near deaths door it sure do sound like it...
See, there's the beauty of this.
We don't have to do anything. We just sit back and watch the various factions of Corporate Earth (it's not just America) kill each other off.
That isn't what happens. Corporations are not like natural human beings. When a human kills another human, you end up less than what you started with.
When 1 corporations kills another, the victor often becomes more powerful than both corporations were as separate entities. This is the accumulation of capital. The trend is that, in time, there will be only 1 corporation left, and it will own absolutely everything.
No one has a right to their *own* opinion. They have a right to the TRUTH.
In traditional buyouts, yes. But this war is different. They aren't conquering, they're destroying. They're killing each other's profits and expending huge amounts of capital in lawsuits.
They aren't in a period of increasing strength. They're in a period of vulnerability. Small, light companies can rise up and exploit the situation, gain a significant market share while still being relatively untouched by the war.
Yes, the "one winner uber-mega-corporation" outcome is a possibility. But it's more a worst-case than a probable-case.
Make a SuperPac like Colbert
So far, all we have is a statement from Nokia. They are not taking legal action, trying for an injunction or anything. From what I can see and read on the article, it seems Nokia is only trying to force Asus/Google to come and talk to them, which is ok in my book. ... and at worst (and thus, correct), stupid.
Trying to compare this to the stunt Apple is pulling is, at best, sensationalism
morcego
Can't prove it but we all know this is another one of Microsoft's proxy wars.
Never know, Apple might have caught on and started a few themselves.
Apple had to license the Nokia patents a while back. It is likely the agreement specified that if there were royalties they could not be larger than anyone else pays. This puts the onus on Nokia to defend it's patents in the future or apple might clawback the agreement.
More to the point, noika's patent portfolio is prodigious and that R&D was not created for trolling but to pave the early and future path of mobile. It is thus not surprising that many things we now (a few years later) take for granted were patentable innovations not very long ago, and Nokia holds them. Even though Nokia is now a crippled weakling in the smart phone market, you have to remember they once were a top athlete before they started taking Performance enhancing drugs (windows). Their future return to profitability is going to depend on a steady patent royalty stream to be able to attract new investors.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Hey look, we're has-beens and now all we can do is patent trolling. Looking forward to buying my "Nokia" branded light bulbs.
Has Samsung pulled their head out of their ass yet? The last Samsung phone I had (M900 - Moment) was a total piece of shit.
This is what I don't understand. Cooperating with each other explicitly or implicitly is a positive sum game. Some might win more than others, but everyone wins. Traditional corporate warfare is at least approximately zero sum, one company buys out the other, they lose control but they still get the money. But this patent war crap? It's massively and obviously negative sum. Who was the guy sitting in his office that thought this was a good idea and why does it keep going on? Even the winners are spending as much in court costs, lawyer bills, and PR losses as they could possibly hope to gain.
I hope it gets to the point where no devices can be launched on time. Hopefully then someone will pull their damned finger out and fix the patent problems.
Basically, it depends on how google has added wifi. When good has made their own chip, then indeed they do need to pay nokia.
I would be willing to bet however that google is using a pre-certified broadcom module or similar. In which case, they just plug it in, stick on the device, contains FCC ID blah blah and Bobs your uncle. No need license anything. Thats one of the points of going with a module.
I would be willing to bet however that google is using a certified Broadcom module, in which case, they just plug it in, stick on the device, contains FCC ID blah blah and Bobs your uncle. No need license anything.
The problem is that you are assuming the "guy sitting in his office" is rational. People are *not* rational. I know I'm not, and I've yet to see a truly rational person. Oh sure, at times, maybe even most of the time, people are somewhat rational. But "homo sapiens sapiens" isn't nearly as wise as he thinks he is.
Their chain of thinking is relatively simple. In the beginning, it was simple - you have a Good Idea, one worth money, one that lets you make good products that you sell for more money.
Patents were invented to protect those Good Ideas, to reward the people who came up with Good Ideas. So obviously, when you have a Good Idea, you should patent it.
Eventually, the distinction between Good Ideas and patents was lost. Every Good Idea becomes patented; every patent covers a Good Idea. And, as Good Ideas are good things that you want a lot of, patents must be good things that you want a lot of.
So the men in suits pushed for more patents. They pushed their thinkers to file more patents, and pushed the laws so they could patent more ideas (because, after all, if an idea is patented, it must be a Good Idea that brings in money!)
But they pushed too far. They ended up with patents that were not Good Ideas, maybe just good ideas. Maybe just ideas, or bad ideas, or just ideas for ideas. And they had so many, they covered almost everything. You can't make a product without using hundreds, even thousands, of patents.
And there are *two* ways to make money from patents. First, you can use it to make a Good Product. But you can also use it to get money from someone else who is making a Good Product.
And more and more, the men in suits focused more on the second way than the first way. Which fed the cycle more - driving more and more patents. Which drove more and more patent suits.
It's a common error of human psychology to never see yourself as the aggressor. People almost always see themselves as the one *being* attacked, not the one *doing* the attacks. So now the men in suits are scared, because they feel as though they're under attack by patents.
But in the system we've ended up with, there really is no defense against patents. All you can do is go on the offensive yourself.
And so they fight back, because that's the only option they can see. They probably can tell it will end badly for them, but I imagine they blame the other companies for "forcing" them into this situation (because, after all, most people prefer to blame others rather than their own short-sightedness).
They can't see that there is an option to change the game, because few men can truly see that option while they play the game. We outsiders can see it, because we aren't in the middle of it.
Nokia missed the mobile boat? Fucking news to me. Considering Nokia sued Apple before MS deal I think you really need to try and get over the fact you were literally born yesterday compared to Nokia.
Microsoft missed the boat, remember how a certain Microsoft exec laughed at Apple's attempt at creating a mobile phone and how much more features Microsoft packed in theirs? Remember what happened to Courier? Have you any recollection of how the mobile landscape evolved since then? Do you see much influence by Microsoft?
That's what I would dare to call "missed the boat".
Now they (Microsoft) have to play catch-up, but instead of accelerating their own R&D, they're falling back on harassing the competition. And they're (ab)using Nokia to do their dirty work for them. Nokia is a mere husk of what it used to be, it has been relagated to being Microsoft's IP bulldog. It was a formidable company, but it has been plucked of anything valuable and has someone at the helm with more allegiance to that other company than to Nokia itself. It's a sinking ship, but it might be able to broadside some others before the waves pull it under completely.
The rest of your reaction does not merit further explanation and is a pretty baseless ad hominem.
My Galaxy S2 Epic (sprint touchscreen) kicks ass. I have it rooted and run an Ice Cream Sandwich rom. Excellent phone. I wouldn't hesitate to upgrade to the Galaxy S3 once 4g LTE becomes available in my area.
The Moment is ~3 years ago. It was a fair phone at the time, a bit chunky. It had a decent processor from what I heard. Both Samsung hardware and Android have come a long way.
[PJ: So, Nokia is suing over a FRAND license. That explains something I was wondering about. With Apple and Microsoft telling the ITC that FRAND licensors should never be allowed to seek an injunction, Nokia sent in a letter [PDF] of support for Microsoft against Motorola, but unlike other supporters of Microsoft it didn't go that far on the FRAND-injunction issue. In footnote 1, it wrote:
"Nokia owns thousands of patents that have been declared essential to various industry standards. Yet in spite of the fact that Nokia has participated in several International Trade Commission investigations as both complainant and respondent, Nokia has never sought an exclusionary order before this Commission based on the infringement of a declared-essential patent. In Nokia’s view, the RAND commitment would not require the relinquishment of the right to seek or enforce an injunction in exceptional circumstances such as the total refusal to negotiate with the holder of an essential patent or the complete refusal to fulfill, or even acknowledge the existence of, a party’s FRAND payment obligations on patents that are valid, essential, and infringed." As you see, it is holding its options open. And suing Google/Android is very much part of the Nokia-Microsoft partnership, I've long said. If you won't buy their phones, they'll narrow your choices or make money from taxing the successful. Do you love patents yet?]
But it seems that Microsoft has stepped up to the plate. FWIW: I was right about Google being sued over this. And the lawsuit is coming from the same patent abuse machine.
Microsoft chose scox as a proxie for the same reason. Scox was dead in the water before they filed their lawsuit against IBM - about ten years ago now.
Scox had gobs of msft money to gain, and nothing to lose.
Nokia is the sequel to scox.
Well, you obviously did not RTFA (because it's about Nokia, not MS) and were just prepared to go on the 'oh, the M$' rant about how they're using Nokia to do their dirty work... Nokia and MS have a deal, they're not going to sue MS & WP, try processing that.
I think Nokia would/should require Google to license their tech even without MS deal; there's no reason for Nokia to subsidise Google even if they aren't out to make real money on the HW itself. They've told Google to get in touch, but since it's an American company expect a minimum 2 years of litigation for tax reasons or just because the US courts are what they are.
Good to know the author contacted you with all the necessary information about the infringing patents and details concerning exactly how (and if) the Nexus 7 infringed them, why not share your superior knowledge with us poor peons? There's no need for an M$ rant. They're far behind any other player in the mobile market and they have a lot of polishing to do with the turd that is Windows 8. So it's only logical that they compensate their inability to innovate with an increased drive to litigate. Nokia is their zombie, a sockpuppet if you will, which abides by Microsoft orders. The big phone powerhouse is no more. I would call it stating the abundantly obvious that they would not sue each other, but at least you got that right.
Nice cheap jab at the judicial process btw, why not become a lawyer and do something about it? But then again, it nicely ties together your theme of aggressive, yet devoid of information type of posts, adorned with one or more per rectum theories.
Nice jab at being specious, but all I know is the article. Nokia has been succesfully suing over their patents before MS deal and will continue to do so; they do have patents which actually are standards essential as in they were a big part of making the standards themselves possible.
Try looking in the mirror and seeing how you parrot someone elses per rectum theories; the amount of pure stupidity and mallaced bias in /. these days begets aggression, this submission will most likely be the last one I respond to.
Just because you bought low end crap doesnt mean Nokia does not make quality phone. I love my N9, and I wish they would make more like it.
Reading comprehension is important, you should work on it. I have one of the best Android phones on the market the Galaxy S2 (Sprint Epic Touch version).
And I said MOST of Nokia's phones are shit. And they are. For every one decent phone Nokia builds they make ten pieces of crap aimed at the pay-as-you-go no contracts market.
I know it's an old phone. I just had such a horrible experience with it that I moved to HTC phones after it. :) My problem wasn't with it's age or power. It was with things like random shutdowns, hard locks, the infamous radio issue, etc...
(Microsoft || Nokia) ... same company.
Enough said.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"