Back in October, Nokia sued Apple for patent infringement. In a response back then, Apple already stated it would defend itself vigorously. We now know just how vigorously: Apple has countersued Nokia, claiming the Finnish electronics company is infringing 13 of Apple’s patents. It’s on.
The statement on Apple’s website couldn’t be more direct and to the point. “Other companies must compete with us by inventing their own technologies, not just by stealing ours,” said Bruce Sewell, Apple’s General Counsel and senior vice president. That’s about all it says, really. Interestingly enough, Nokia said more or less the exact same thing back in October.
Apple hasn’t specified yet which 13 patents Nokia infringes upon, but in all likelihood, Apple is probably right. However – so is Nokia. In this world, everybody infringes upon everybody else’s patents, which is why you see few large companies really going head-to-head when it comes to patents; it’s usually smaller companies out for money preying on the large ones.
We’ll probably see some flexing of the muscles in the coming years, before all this will end in some sort of settlement, never to be heard of again.
Nokia has most of the essential GSM patents with 67 of 158 most essential patents or around 45 % of GSM patents and with WCDMA around 30 % of the essential patents. And then they have large patent portfolios in HSPA and 4G and WIFI plus other IPR around UI or other stuff.
Apple might go after some GUI related patent.
Cash settlement will probably be the outcome, as Cross-licensing agreements don’t make sense in this case.
Huh? If any thing a cross licensing deal is, perhaps, more likely in this case.
Which one of these two companies do you think would fork out cash? Apple won’t do it now; they’ve countersued – too much self-righteous pride to do that. Nokia won’t fork out a penny. They’ve got a far bigger grab bag of relevant patents and tons of licensing precedent.
They’ll both want to walk away with their pound of flesh and the only way they can both do that is with a cross licensing deal: Apple doesn’t pay up and get’s to save face. Nokia walks away with the only “legitimate” license to pinch, flick, blah, blah, blah…
If apple has a valid patent on flicking, it wouldn’t be possible to implement reasonable open source UIs for touch screen devices. Flicking is also simple physical simulation on computer, how in the world could you patent that? You can’t really own laws of nature.
Agreed. Thus the use of quotation marks in
Nokia might have wanted to cross license, that would be the reason why Nokia Apple talks broke down.
Nokia’s suit is all about the money. Apple’s is all about defence, but on very shaky grounds. Since Nokia’s patents are technological and H/W in essence, while Apple’s are mostly in software.
Cross license only make sense when both has large patent portfolios. A few examples: Nokia and RIM deal Nokia got a up-front payment and royalties from RIM.
With Huawei they signed a Cross-License Agreement, as both gets an advantage from etch others 4G patents.
Apple and RIM are pretty similar case.
This could very well turn out to be one interesting drama. The interesting thing here is, afaik, Nokia is in the much stronger position given they hold the hardware patents on quite a few of the technologies Apple is using. Does Apple hold anything, really, that they can use against Nokia other than perhaps some look-and-feel patents (ridiculous anyway)? As much as I like Apple’s actual products, it’d be nice to see them put in their place, not that Nokia is all that much better in some of what they are wanting to do.
There was no chance Apple would have licensed their Multitouch patents.
So, Nokia sued them knowing they will get sued back and as always this will end in a cross-licensing deal. Nokia would give up a few of the telecom/cellphone patents they have amassed over decades and in return would get Multitouch.
If this is the case, then well played Nokia.
Edited 2009-12-11 18:30 UTC
Sounds like a very crappy deal to me.
“See, you can touch the panel not just by one finger, but… wait for it… TWO fingers”. I can’t believe I didn’t think of it myself.
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/33930
While it is a bit ridiculous, more-than-one is actually much harder than only-one. Not so much harder that you should be able to patent the very idea, though.
Nokia has their own multi touch tech, like 3D multi touch that they just filed for, and older ones are touch less that recognize commands without a single touch on the screen.
Cross-licensing deal are just a option if both are equal like Nokia and Qualcomm or Ericsson and some of the other larger players. Cash-Licensing deal is the most likely outcome like they have with a few others.
The 10 patents are probably the 10 that are rock-solid and has to be used.
Back in October, Nokia sued Apple for copyright infringement.
Shouldn’t that read “patent infringement” instead?
Thom, you need to fix the second link (to the Apple counter suit). There is a double quote stuck at the end of the URL.
Frankly, if these other patents are UI based, and about mulit-touch, I’m not that impressed. The iPhone UI is pretty good, but frankly, not that innovative. Without the Apple-style UI, you still have a functional device. You just have to come up with a slightly different UI.
Also, there are examples of prior art – Touch screens with shiny icons have been around for years.
Apple is just really good at packaging and marketing. They’re not great at innovation.
Nokia’s patents seem much stronger, IMHO. They’re based on hardware, networking, and GSM, all essential to have a phone, or smart phone, at all. Without ’em, you don’t have a product.
Also, Nokia has much, much, much greater patent licensing precedence. The 10 patents in question have already been licensed to over 40 other companies. The validity (legal precdence) of these patents is rock solid.
Frankly, Nokia should take a hard line in this. They’ve got the much better hand. And while this all plays out, they can simply redesign the UI of their products (which they’re in the process of with the Symbian OS), and they they’re not even in violation of Apple’s patents.
Apple can’t do that as easily. It would be really hard for them to re-invent the hardware, networking, and GSM that the iPhone (and all others) depend upon.
Apple can pound their chest all they want. But unless Nokia finds a way to really screw this up, Apple is toast (in this legal battle) in the long run.
I agree to 100 %.
Nokia should counter this countersue with a importban that would speed things up a bit. It worked before and it would work now.
The current Symbian/S60 UI are pretty much the same as in the 3d edition that has prior art.
reinventing the hardware and networking are not an option the device has to interact with the carriers network and to do that Nokias patents are needed.
I really don’t get it, if the ones making the GSM chips (last i heard qualcomm) have licensing deals with Nokia, why would apple also need to have them?
Well, first of all Apple doesn’t use Qualcomm chips.
The deal between them are that: Nokia gets a license to use Qualcomm’s tech and Qualcomm can incorporate Nokia’s tech in their components, and Qualcomm’s customers pay royalty to Nokia.
And the rest uses a similar approach.
Apple’s patents are known now. Among the patents Apple accuses Nokia of infringing:
* No. 5,634,074 : Serial I/O device identifies itself to a computer through a serial interface during power on reset then it is being configured by the computer
* No. 6,343,263 B1 : Real-time signal processing system for serially transmitted data
* No. 5,915,131 : Method and apparatus for handling I/O requests utilizing separate programming interfaces to access separate I/O services
* No. 5,555,369: Method of creating packages for a pointer-based computer system
* No. 6,239,795 B1: Pattern and color abstraction in a graphical user interface
* No. 5,315,703: Object-oriented notification framework system
* No. 6,189,034 B1: Method and apparatus for dynamic launching of a teleconferencing application upon receipt of a call
* No. 7,469,381, B2: List scrolling and document translation, scaling, and rotation on a touch-screen display
* No. RE 39, 486 E: Extensible, replaceable network component system
* No. 5,455,854: Object-oriented telephony system
* No. 7,383,453 B2: Conserving power by reducing voltage supplied to an instruction-processing portion of a processor
* No. 5,848,105: GMSK signal processors for improved communications capacity and quality
* No. 5, 379,431: Boot framework architecture for dynamic staged initial program load
from:
http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/20091211/apple-countersues-nokia…
IMO these patents show very well what’s wrong with software patents.
They are trivial, “Object-oriented notification framework system” OH!! WOW!! there’s notification frameworks, we know about OO programming lets patent a OO notification framework.
They’re also very broad. “Extensible, replaceable network component system” that can mean pretty much anything. Reading the abstract it sounds like a plugin system, just with components over a network.
There’s usually prior art, e.g. the last one sound for me like it’s a description of the UNIX init system which was AFAIK around before 1993.
Unfortunately I doubt Nokia will take these down. If they demonstrate how trivial and ridiculous these patents are it will take down quite a bit of the whole software patent card-house. And I don’t believe Nokia will do that.
I imagine the devil is in the details. Patents always seem trivial and vague from their title alone.
Unfortunately no, usually software and business method patents are written as broad as possible. If you actually read the patents closely you’ll see that they are indeed patenting an object oriented notification framework, and the similarities to the UNIX init system actually don’t come from reading the title but looking at the abstract and patent itself.
J
Totally agree to this, Nokia has more interest in upholding the current mess than fighting it.
Apple is just acting defensively to avoid an injunction against the selling of their iPhone.
nuff said.
What if we made patents like trademarks where if you don’t defend them you lose them? There’d be a huge explosion, I imagine. But would we be left with something more sane afterward than what we have now?
Edited 2009-12-13 14:06 UTC