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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!
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.
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."
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.
RTFS. It's not the sale that's the issue, it's the part that's not being sold that's the issue.
We wouldn't do that. Protecting people from predatory practices is the dreaded soociialsshinm.
> Particularly ones where they have no product that they offer,
This is exactly what is going on. What's left of Nokia won't have any manufacturing capacity or products. Another NPE.
>Motorola
Motorola makes actual products.
Being this dumb should hurt.
--
BMO
The difference is that Motorola is actually making phones and doing research while Nokia is just riding the coattails of a division that no longer exists.
Since Motorola is still in the game it still uses other people patents. If they are a dick towards others then the other patent holders will be dicks towards Motorola. There is an incentive for Motorola to play fair. Nokia does not have that restraint. They could be huge dicks and the other handset manufactures could not retaliate directly against them. Not saying that Nokia will be a dick – just that they could.
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.
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!
"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?
I need a phone not a damned computer.
Precisely. My Nokia is a much better phone by virtue of the fact that it doesn't try to be anything but a phone. It has one job to do, and it does it well with a much more compact and energy efficient package than a "smartphone" that is neither as good a phone as my Nokia nor as good a computer as my PC, compromising its ability to do either well by trying to be both at once.
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
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 ]