Nokia Feeds a Patent Troll

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Posted by Soulskill on Friday August 10, 2012 @04:18AM from the om-nom-nom dept.

New submitter glebovitz writes "In case anyone missed the other Nokia news: on the same day they announced the sale of Qt to Digia, they also sold 500 patents to Vringo. Vringo, a video ring tone company, recently merged with patent portfolio company Innovate/Protect which includes Donald Stout, the founder of patent holding company NTP, on its board. Forbes refers to NTP as 'a patent troll which milked Research In Motion for $612.5 million in a patent infringement settlement reached in 2006.' As Eric Savitz writes in the article, 'Vringo decided to basically turn itself into a patent troll.'"

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Nokia selling more of its crown jewels by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-10 04:26 · Score: 3, Insightful

In its quest to become another no-name mobile phone OEM it is imperative to shut down all research and development, because the future really isn't important.
Why haven't the shareholders held a vote of no confidence in the current Nokia board?
1. Re:Nokia selling more of its crown jewels by hairyfeet · 2012-08-10 05:50 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Look any way you slice it Nokia is dead and they were dead before Elop ever walked in the door, why? Because their big business is about to go the way of the 8-track, that's why. Nokia made their money on dumbphones and we can all see the writing on the wall, as the chips drop dumbphones will disappear. Hell Walmart has begun offering smartphones on their cheapo prepaid plans at $125, when that gets down to $50 that's it, its over.
  Put yourself in the shoes of Elop, you walk through the door and the business is totally fractured, you got no less than THREE different phone OSes, none of which is compatible with the others, Symbian, MeeGo/Maemo, and the Java based one I can't remember the name of. Now the company couldn't buy WebOS because they couldn't throw a billion like HP, Apple sure as fuck ain't selling them iOS, Android is right out because Samsung and HTC do it better than anybody and the market is flooded with Android phones already, and no product you have will be able to compete for at least a year and a half and that is if everything goes perfectly. So he took the money from MSFT and hoped like hell they knew WTF they were doing with WinPhone.
  Was it a good call? Nope but frankly i don't see what other call the guy could make, Android would make them an also ran, a third or fourth string player at best compared to Samsung and HTC, and MeeGo/Maemo simply wasn't done and was already behind. When you are in the same market as Apple you can't go half assed which is what MeeGo would have been if he shoved it out the door so the guy literally was out of options. He had no OS, a market that was dying, and was rapidly running out of time. I don't see where the guy had a choice really, its not like he could wave a magic wand and suddenly make MeeGo/Maemo into an iPhone killer, it just wasn't anywhere near done.
  
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  ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Re:Distinctions should be made by schitso · 2012-08-10 04:33 · Score: 4, Insightful

Something being legal doesn't make it right.
Re:Distinctions should be made by MoonFog · 2012-08-10 04:36 · Score: 4, Insightful

Because the entire business method of patent trolls typically include only suing others. They don't generate anything of value and will only fatten the bank accounts for themselves and their lawyer.

These aren't guys who invented something, got a patent on it and sued those trying to copy, they buy patents from others (who may not even have bothered going after the alleged infringers) and use those patents as grounds to sue. They are leeches.
Re:faith in humanity lost... by medcalf · 2012-08-10 04:43 · Score: 3, Insightful

You first.

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Re:Distinctions should be made by tgd · 2012-08-10 04:50 · Score: 2, Insightful

Because the entire business method of patent trolls typically include only suing others. They don't generate anything of value and will only fatten the bank accounts for themselves and their lawyer.
These aren't guys who invented something, got a patent on it and sued those trying to copy, they buy patents from others (who may not even have bothered going after the alleged infringers) and use those patents as grounds to sue. They are leeches.
And that has been a business model for at least 150 years in the US. The patent system was quite literally designed for that. Patent thickets, licensing companies and the ilk were extremely common during the rise of the industrial age from things like loom technology, to sewing machines, to industrial controllers.
You may feel they're leeches (and, by the way, I agree), but the system was explicitly set up to allow for (and, frankly, encourage) things like that. It gave inventors incentive to do their inventing and get compensated for it, without having to build out a business themselves. Its a win-win for the investment community that wants to consume them and the inventors who are producing them. It absolutely has encouraged huge amounts of innovation in the last 200 years.
The bigger problem is not the fact that its legal to do that, its that there are so many lousy patents, and the litigation costs are high enough that its cheaper to settle most of the time without a jugement on the quality of the patent. If you want to fix the problem, you need to get the US government to hire ten times the number of qualified reviewers, spend the money to make it easier to trace though existing patents and solve the litation problem (mandatory licensing, mandatory arbitration, guaranteed legal fees if the patent holder loses the case, things like that...)
The ability for a particular person to be able to be compensated for their innovation without needing to start a company and begin manufacturing something is an important thing for progress in general. There's certainly a lot of evidence to suggest the spike in technological advance 200 years ago started precisely because of the rise of a patent system that encouraged inventors to do inventing as a full-time job. For that to work, you have to be able to buy and sell patents, and if you do that, you're going to get situations exactly like we have. Fix the process of issuing patents, and you'll get back to the controlled insanity of the 19th century instead of the uncontrolled insanity of the 21st.
Re:faith in humanity lost... by MobileTatsu-NJG · 2012-08-10 04:52 · Score: 1, Insightful

fuck humans, we have no redeaming qualities... everyone should stop breeding and wait until we all die out
... said just days after the Curiosity rover safely landed on Mars.

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"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Re:F&^CK You USA, I really hate you for this. by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-10 06:30 · Score: 2, Insightful

Typical. We know it is f&^cked up, but lets talk about some f&^cked up laws in other countries.