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EU Warns Nokia Not To Become a Patent Troll
Barence writes "The vice president of the European Commission's Competition unit has warned Nokia not to become a 'patent troll'. Nokia is in the process of selling its devices business to Microsoft, giving rise to fears that the remaining part of Nokia will make more aggressive use of its patents portfolio. Vice president Joaquin Almunia said that the commission had dismissed the possibility that 'Nokia would be tempted to behave like a patent troll' when it cleared the way for Microsoft to acquire Nokia's devices division – but warned that 'if Nokia were to take illegal advantage of its patents in the future, we will open an antitrust case.' 'I sincerely hope we will not have to,' said Almunia."
When I worked at Microsoft, we were joking about how this would happen. One guy I knew about in another department actually got canned over just the joking. He literally said "Lolwut" when they fired him. They don't take this stuff lightly anymore!
It's not often that selling part of your business would be an anti-trust issue...
It's all in the game...
I suspect that that is a part of Microsoft's business model for the future Nokia.
It already dabbles in it, but now it will be free to pursue Android manufacturers without having any product of its own which could be attacked in a MAD world.
if only such reason could occur over here in NA
American Slashdotter: "Our government ought to do something about these god damned patent trolls!!!!"
European Government actually does something about patent trolls.
American Slashdotter: "Damn europeans! Always picking on our good ol hard workin corporations. Its about freedom and choice. Don't they get it."
I'm sure they'll pinkie swear to it and that'll be the end of it.
Nokia: We swears! We swears on.... on the preciousssss.
And we all know how well that went. Just wait until there'll be another, more "friendly" commissioner or until they'll "persuade" the current one.
I don't understand how this would be "Patent Trolling". The premise for actual patent trolling is a business that exists but never had any real capacity and leverages money out of people and demands licensing out of patent claims they have which are broad and over-reaching. Particularly ones where they have no product that they offer, either in the past or present that makes use of their particular patent.
In this case I don't see how this would be any different than Motorola enacting lawsuits demanding royalties/licensing for technologies that everyone uses and takes for granted. They would be valid complaints. It would not be particularly good for development and a broader free market, but it would still be legitimate.
Are they still in business? I haven't seen a Nokia cell phone in years. Almost everyone has either an Apple Iphone or a Samsung Galaxy. Come to think of it, no one I know has a "dumb phone."
Nokia have already started patent trolling. Aling with Apple and MS.
Its just under the guise of another shell company - AFAIK Rockstar Consortium. This using the patents they previously promised to not use aggressively. they got around that by creating Rockstar Consortium and letting it troll for them.
So how many of Elop's people, he brought in from Microsoft, are in the remaining pieces of Nokia? That should be a good indication of how they will use those patents. After all, I doubt Microsoft paid Nokia for access to those patents without also making sure elements were in place to exercise 'protection'. I mean, the thug of the PC industry couldn't sell its way into the phone segment so they destroyed Nokia to get going. Once a thug for decades, always a thug.
Europe already has the legislation. Has had for years.
They're just saying to Nokia "Go ahead punk, make my day"
Nowhere does it say that Nokia cannot leverage it's patent portfolio and make a business out of that. The operative word in the Commission statement is "illegal". Being a patent-owning business (and nothing else) is not illegal, nor is licensing the property for considerable fees. Heck, suing for profit isn't either. So the actual value of this statement is minor.
https://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9237869/Nokia_uses_patents_to_block_Google_VP8_video_codec
This behavior by government officials is, or should be, illegal. Patent trolls are bad, but officials threatening to withhold licensing or "review" it for legal behaviors that have nothing to do with the issue in question is a gross, kingly abuse of power.
If patent troll behavior of the remnant is illegal, you deal with that directly as a criminal issue.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
In 2016, Nokia can re-enter the cell phone market under its own name. This may mean them going back into designing their own phones, or purchasing Jolla, the spin-off company run by former Nokia engineers. Jolla has already put a very nice looking low-end cell phone on the market, and I expect them to continue to build out their smart phone portfolio in the near future. I can definitely see them once again becoming a part of Nokia in 2016. I don't think Nokia would be content to remain a patent-only business. Also, keep in mind, they are retaining their very lucrative mapping business as well.
hey!
They only open an antitrust case "if Nokia were to take illegal advantage of its patents".
Note the word "illegal". If they didn't take action, then they would be condoning illegal activity.
To late... back when Nokia started with windows phone OS, Nokia put the patents in a separate company at MS's recommendation. It cannot help but be a troll company now.
"I'd say that the US is trying to do something about trolls"
Been out of country for a week. Could I have missed anything so badly?
That will help some, but they are not tackling the important issues. The patent office can't reject a patent, they can only force the company to pay for a continuation (where they get the original filing date). 89% of US patents end in approval. Only 11% end in an abandonment.
Here's a good article that explains the real issue:
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2013/12/the_simple_fix_that_could_heal_the_patent_system.html
Note, that it won't happen, because Joe Voter doesn't know/care, and Apple/Microsoft et. al. are big funders of congress on both sides.
So because they're exiting the phone market at least temporarily they should just throw away all their IP? Nokia spent more in R&D than like 5 of its biggest competitors combined for solid 10-15 years in a row.
Hear hear. Everything that you say is right.
The avalanche is about to happen. Stick to your GUNNs.
Here is their most popular video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGywo81G6lk
and the Wikipedia entry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finntroll
"Finntroll is a folk metal band from Helsinki, Finland. They combine elements of black metal and folk metal. Finntroll's lyrics are mostly in Swedish, the only exception being the song "Madon Laulu" on Visor Om Slutet. Finntroll's first singer Katla decided to use Swedish over Finnish since he was part of a Swedish-speaking minority in Finland and the sound of the language seemed to better suit the band's "trollish" outfit. Despite several vocalist changes, this tradition has continued. According to bandmembers Vreth and Skrymer, they took their name from an old Finnish legend where Swedish priests coming to Finland had an encounter with a wild-looking man who killed most of their party. The survivors came back bearing the tale of the Finn-Troll."
Lets not forget the it was the European Commission that pushed for software patents and the directive only failed because European Parliament voted against it. Now we have the push for the Unified Patent Court, and this may just introduce software patents through the back door.
On the other hand, to outsider like me, Microsoft's R&D center has over the last several years looked more to center who's role is to find occupation for big brains so they are kept in microsoft's clutch instead of going to innovate elsewhere.
Microsoft has had tons of fun tech demos. (Photosynth, for exemple, for a visually appealing one. I was under the impression that Microsoft was among the first to show software doing something to gather visual data from tons of references pictures. Microsoft Singularity introduced tons of cool idea: a concurrent managed language whose characteristics make it possible to be formally and provably analysed for security, subsequently software process separation and lightweight microthreads, and thus a microkernel based OS almost entirely inmanageable code, with provable process isolation, and with little of the microkernel task-switching associated costs).
But almost nothing came out of these research (Photosynth end-up eventually being released to the public, after a while. Meanwhile, the visual processing world has gone crazy, both in the fundamental research [automatic on the-fly removal of objects from video; or horizontal compression *without* actually stretching object, instead just removing un-needed details; and all the other cool tech demo that are featured on slashdot every other week]. Singularity has gone no where, the current crop of Microsoft OSes [windows 8.1, X-Box] are juste the last generation+1. Meanwhile, Scala has become one of the hot functional language to actually see widespread business usage. LLVM is the compiler getting improved to the point that some provability can be asserted even on imperative language like C [and thus can be used to do more advanced/provable security checks than memcheck, etc] while GCC has also its crop of security-test instrumentation [some taken from LLVM], Stackless Python is the hot topic for microthreads without hardware penalty [and actual massive applications like EVE-Online], etc. )
The only success that Microsoft can pat itself on the back about, is that during this time these brain have been wasted inside Microsoft's R&D departement and thus haven't gone working for a competitor and made their discoveries there subsequently turning them into actual products competing with Microsoft's stagnating shit).
Sad part? The absence of strong business successes following that research will probably used by the MBAs as additionnal proof that R&D should be sacked in favour of Sales/Marketing.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Now can we get the same in North America ?
I've got better things to do tonight than die.
How can you take "illegal advantage" of something which governments legally granted you?
If you have patents that had you as the tops in your field, and other people have run you out of business, why shouldn't you keep them from profiting from your misfortune. If they are going to undercut you, let them do it with their own creativity.