Remember when Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone, and proclaimed, to much applause, that they patented the hell out of it? Well, apparently Apple likes to boast about its own patents, but when it comes to dealing with other's they're not so willing. That is, if you believe Nokia: the largest phone manufacturer in the world has sued Apple for patent infringement.
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I'm waiting to see if the details of the contract negociations ever come out.
Having been in a situation where I was part of proposed licending deal with a patentee and just before we signed up we found out that the other company had done deals at a much lower price with other companies. When we tried to re-negociate the deal we were met with the words
"Sign the deal or we will sue for patent violation"
This is (IMHO) a great way to screw any possible competitor.
Obviously, I have no evidence in this case and there is a long way to go but as with every story, there are at least two sides to it.
Member since:2009-05-19
Having been in a situation where I was part of proposed licending deal with a patentee and just before we signed up we found out that the other company had done deals at a much lower price with other companies. When we tried to re-negociate the deal we were met with the words
"Sign the deal or we will sue for patent violation"
This is (IMHO) a great way to screw any possible competitor.
Obviously, I have no evidence in this case and there is a long way to go but as with every story, there are at least two sides to it.
Last time I checked, current worldwide patent system does not force the patent holders to license their inventions. No does it force to treat everyone the same and sell licenses at the same price. Only standards bodies require the public and non-exclusive licensing of patents.
Member since:2009-02-07
Its probably not basic anti-competitive behavior, they have funded chip and software development, that benefit the competition as well.
They have been in talks for a long time, and Ericsson has an agreement with Apple. This is probably a way to get talks to go somewhere.
Well Nokia's 3Q loss is just a one time "cost" do to write downs in Nokia Siemens Networks, and Navteq.
Its not a cash flow and only implication to the shareholders are cashdividend, not a bid deal as most of Nokias "dividends" are in the form of stock repurchase.
Devices made pretty good profit and did even better then estimations in some areas. So it seems that the market has reach the bottom and should start to grow again, and under 3Q their has been component shortages in the industry.
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2006-12-20
What kind of patents are these? If they are sensible hardware-based patents for non-obvious inventions created by Nokia, then this is a reasonable action. I think it is right that physical inventions can be patented, and if Apple ignored the patents that apply to them, well they deserve to get sued.
Of course if this basic anti-competitive patent troll behaviour then shame on Nokia. However, I feel inclined to give Nokia the benefit of the doubt at this stage, especially considering the good work they've been doing with LGPLing Qt and also for the upcoming N900, which looks very promising as a hackable Linux smartphone.
I think the "if you can't beat them, sue them" line is a bit premature, we'll have to see whether or not Nokia can beat them with the aforementioned N900 and whatever Maemo 6 devices may manifest in 2010. By this time next year I think we'll be in a better position to judge this.
I recall hearing that Nokia posted a loss for last quarter, could this action be driven by shareholder pressure based on this bad performance?