Submitted by “Responding to Apple’s vehement countersuit against Nokia, in which it leveled 13 patent infringement allegations against Nokia’s 10, last December 29, Nokia added 14 more to the mix, including for concepts that may perhaps be as integral to the construction of modern telephones as power-conserving voltage-controlled oscillators, and a sensor that de-activates touchscreens while the phone is held against the ear.”
It seems that Nokia’s going for unrestricted access to all (or most) of the iPhone patents in exchange for giving Apple access to all of its patents, dashing Steve Jobs’ hopes of using patents to achieve a dominant position. Apple was thinking that they could build a one-way street because so many cell phone standard-related patents are in pools that can be bought for standard rates. But there are plenty of required patents that are not.
They could settle, or they could fight for years and then settle.
You assume that Nokia is right and Apple is wrong.
well considering the number of patents being thrown around here, both are probably guilty of infringement on some. And many these are hardware patents, much more hard to invalidate than software, which are still pretty tough to challenge at least until the supreme court makes it ruling on the pending Bilski case. And only the first batch of GSM patents are required to be offered under RAND terms, so Nokia has a decent shot here. Of course its only a matter of time until Apple fires back with even more patents that Apple thinks Nokia is violating.
Nokia has been producing telecommunications electronics since 70s, that means they’ve got 40 years worth of patents to throw around. That’s a truckload of stuff, and if they were really going for the kill iPhone would soon become only a distant memory of the past.
As much as I dislike patents, I gotta say I love this situation from the bottom of my heart: Apple has been harassing people online, issuing DMCA notices everywhere, even for the slightest of reasons, they keep restricting both developers and users and so on. It’s really moving to see them getting their arse handed back over to them for a change.
And no, Nokia isn’t a perfect company either, but atleast I can’t recall of them ever issuing DMCA takedown notices to fansites or even sites with all kinds of Nokia cellphone-related hacking tutorials and tools. Such sites are plentiful. And with their new N900 phone they are actually really encouraging geeks to go wild with their phones and aren’t really restricting anything. That’s a very different attitude than with Apple.
Agree. It’s about time that somebody taught Apple a little humility. I like the iPhone, but the ecosystem is pathetically closed and locked-down. Here’s hoping that Nokia kicks the crap out of them in court.
Would any GSM / UMTS patents apply to Apple? The iPhones use EDGE / 3G baseband processors from Infineon.
Thats what the first lawsuit was about, however those are required to be offered under RAND (reasonable and non-discriminatory) terms. Apple would argue that Nokia are trying to force extra money out of them just because they are very successful. And thats basically what Apples counter-suit said along with throwing out a few patents that they believe Nokia to be in violation of, mostly look and fell and software patents if I remember correctly. Now Nokia has fought back with a new set of lawsuits alleging that Apple has violated many of their hardware patents in pretty much every device Apple produces. Its a very aggressive strategy that most companies don’t pursue because they are almost certainly violating some patents as well. Nokia is betting that their patent portfolio is worth more than Apples and they will come out ahead. We will have to wait and see. Considering how long Nokia has been developing hardware, they could very well be right.
None of them are “right”… the most logic conclusion is, they’re both wrong!
…unless you define a previous point of view…
It’s nice to see someone stand up to Apple who actually has a chance of winning for a change, not to mention any names or anything. Then again, I think that if the big companies dont get along Google is just going to go ahead and crush them in the mobile market.
“Google, like a steamroller with a smiley face on the front” sure it’s about to crush you, but how can you resist loving google (unless your like me and think they are taking over the world a lot like how the politics go down in the first 3 starwars movies. “what do you mean the good republic becomes the evil empire?”)
Edited 2010-01-04 23:42 UTC
Couldn’t agree more.
Hopefully, no player in the mobile market will get too big, because that’s the only way that competition is going to continue to produce better quality devices.
What are you both talking about?
Standing up to Apple so it won’t get too big?
Nokia is a frikkin’ mammoth! Just because it’s irrelevant in the US, this company is dominating the mobile market in almost every other region in the world. And yeah, they’re lowering the quality constantly.
Nokia phones, even the cheaper ones have pretty good quality. Call quality on a really cheap Nokia is as good as on my iPhone.
And the software, though it isn’t anything fancy, is decent, and much better than on competing Motorola, Samsung or LG phones, and their service is far superior. In the past year me and my friends have had really bad experiences with repair & service in India by Motorola, Samsung & LG phones and have decided to only purchase Nokia phones. There is a reason Nokia sells so many phones.
They have actually improved their quality recently(Nokia 2323 is great for the price). They did lower it for a number of years, but lately the cheap phones are far better in build quality than Samsung, LG or SonyEricson. I have a Nokia 6021 that is 4 years old, still in perfect condition, even though it’s been abused since the day I got it. Their foldable phones are crap though…
Do you both counter my argument with low-end phones?
I’m talking about the smartphone range. Have either of you seen a Nokia 5800? Or the brand new X6? Cheap plastic galore, with user experience three steps behind the competing platforms. Yeah, even Windows Mobile (see the HTC HD2).
Edited 2010-01-07 21:02 UTC
The X series are cheap entry/mid level smartphone’s meant for young consumers, even do they are plastic they feel solid, and the new X6 are big improvement, plus it comes with all the music you can download in a year. And they can multi task, but sure they can still be improved and the new Qt based UI might just do that.
E and N series are competing with Apple, and both the E72 and N900 are great phones.
HTC is a bad example they use their own interface, not windows own interface.
Nice argument. Except Apple is only relevant in the US.
Why exactly?
The iPhones starting from 3G are sold pretty much everywhere.
Apple’s marketshare worldwide is very low. It’s presence is primarily in the US.
Patent laws need more details and should
be resolved in a timely manner. When I mean
a timely manner, I mean 60 days or less.
An if a company doesn’t resolve their patent
issues within the 60 days. Both parties shouldn’t
be able to sell that product until the issue
is resolved. If they still don’t comply ALL
products that company makes or sells should
be banned and all company assets frozen till
the issues are resolved.
So I would infringe on your patent, and stall for 60 days, and my partner would just take over your market share. After that, I become willing to resolve and you are left with no market, while me and my partner just took it over… That’s a brilliant IDEA.
It is tragicomic to see two major players, who have been promoting software patents globally, now being dragged, by each other, into the same legal minefields where they have been trying to push their weaker competitors into.
Most if not all software patents tend to cover very basic technology (web shopping carts etc.), usually nothing so advanced that any competent software designer couldn’t invent. I would go so far as to say that patenting basic ideas and then preventing others from freely having and using similar ideas is against the freedom of thought too.
Now, let’s see, in this poker game, whether Apple calls, folds or reraises Nokia’s bid, and who gets the pot this time.
It is tragicomic to see two major players, who have been promoting software patents globally
I actually think that most if not all of Nokia’s patents are hardware patents. They’re not a software company and they’ve never been. Hardware has always been their primary objective. If you can find a list of all the patents Nokia is holding on to I can almost bet you that more than half of them are hardware-related.
Apple is more of a software company than Nokia and thus Apple is sure to wield a larger software-related patent portfolio than Nokia, and whatever hardware patents they have are probably related to computers.
The majority of Nokias patents in this suite and their patentportfolio are hardware patents and industrial design.
And most of their competitors get their software from 3d-party’s like Symbian, Google, Microsoft etc. And most of them has rather large patent portfolio of their own, like Samsung and Huawei for example.
—
This suit is based around hardware patents. But software patents if they are issued correctly would not be such a bad idea. Basic concepts would be outside the system, and advance software like algorithms, encryption, integration etc. would be in the system.
You may be quite right about that in this particular case. But I was referring to Nokia openly lobbying for the patentability of software in the EU, for example. So far reason has won over corporate greed and software patents are not valid in the EU yet, although the situation is confusing considering that the EPO does grant software patents in the EU too, and as big corporations continue lobbying for the patentability of software.
“An interpretation, which is followed by the Boards of Appeal of the EPO, is that an invention is patentable if it provides a new and non-obvious technical solution to a technical problem.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_patents_under_the_European_Pa…
Maybe something like a completely new kind of a programming language could fit into that description, but also new computer languages tend to be based on other older computer languages and ideas already discussed by others. Something less than that would certainly not meet those requirements.
I’m really astonished, I thought these things were invented so long ago they were kinda public domain like resistors 😮
I don’t want to be an Apple hater or anything, because they do have some good products with good design (I have an iPod, and I’m even typing this in Safari). However, they are currently the ultimate in arrogance, and don’t have a really friendly attitude towards both customers and developers. And Apple flaunts their own patents, and sues fan sites, and generally act like a-holes.
I’m not a Nokia fan, per-se. I have a cheap-o Nokia flip phone that meets my basic cell phone needs. It’s a pretty good, solid phone that does what I need and does so easily.
But Nokia has not given me the impression that they are arrogant a-holes, and seem very customer and developer friendly.
And now, arrogant a-holes Apple have stepped on Nokia’s toes, and are discovering that they are a sleeping Tiger ready to eat them alive.
Nokia’s patent portfolio is huge, and mostly hardware related, and fully validated by market precedence (many other companies have to license with Nokia on these same patents Nokia is suing Apple over).
And Apple is trying to counter sue Nokia over stuff like Multi-touch and other general interface/design oriented stuff.
It’s like a 100 pound weakling armed with a pocket knife (Apple) going at a dude that’s 6-4, 220 pounds, 6th degree black belt in karate, armed with machine guns and samurai swords (Nokia).
And the 100 pound weakling thinks he’s the bad-@ss.
Truly, it’s a thing of beauty.