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Comments: 367 +- Your Rights Online: Nokia Sues Apple For Patent Infringement In iPhone on Thursday October 22, @12:12PM
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by
samzenpus
on Thursday October 22, @12:12PM
from the we-did-it-first dept.
from the we-did-it-first dept.
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AVee writes "Engadget (amongst many others) reports that Nokia is suing Apple because the iPhone infringes on 10 Nokia patents related to GSM, UTMS and WiFi. While the press release doesn't contain much detail, it does state that Apple didn't agree to 'appropriate terms for Nokia's intellectual property,' which sounds like there have been negotiations about those patents."
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I'll ask it again (Score:5, Insightful)
Canned answer (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Canned answer (Score:5, Funny)
Yahoo's Answer: Lap Dances
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Re:I'll ask it again (Score:5, Insightful)
Read the press release. Nokia has spent 40 billion euros in R&D over the last two decades. Wireless communication is probably not quite as simple as one click shopping.
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Re:I'll ask it again (Score:5, Interesting)
Because otherwise it would be crap? We're not even talking about sound compression algorithms here, but stuff that needs serious R&D. You think >10Mbps downlink for your phone comes for free?
Think about it this way: would you rather have a patented standard everyone contributes to or have Nokia and Samsung privately decide on something they'll use together and shut everyone else out?
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Re:I'll ask it again (Score:4, Informative)
stuff that needs serious R&D
Name one.
You think >10Mbps downlink for your phone comes for free?
It uses (among other things) Turbo codes which were developed by huge number of people (from different companies, universities, etc.) during several years. Why it is allowed to be patented the one implementation of the family? It could be found by computer search, or a trivial modification of paper from sixties or even fifties.
3G or LTE uses NOTHING fundamentally new - or show me.
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Re:I'll ask it again (Score:5, Informative)
Except that I've learned later this is not at all the way things work. Standards are highly political, and highly economic. Academics rarely has any place in the product, except maybe by getting a few votes. There is sort of a hope out there that most voters will remain above the fray, but in practice this is a misplaced hope most of the time.
What generally happens, is that company A develops a new technology, and starts to sell it. Then company B develops a competing product, with vaguely similar technology. A standardization effort is started. Both company A and B refuse to compromise, and insist that their implementation be the standard. After all, these companies are already selling products to customers, and if they lose this standards fight, then they end up with a lot of customers who have noncompliant/obsolete devices. Meanwhile companies C and D join the standardization effort, because they want to make similar products but can't afford the years of prior research and development to come up with their own technology. Companies E and F join because they want to make auxillary products that can interact properly with the devices when they're standardized. Then all these people start taking sides.
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Re:I'll ask it again (Score:4, Interesting)
There is sort of a hope out there that most voters will remain above the fray, but in practice this is a misplaced hope most of the time.
most of the time the people sent to the standards are paid specifically to get what are called "fundamental patents" into the standard. That is where you have patented one particular way to do something (we do remember patents are about methods, not objectives) and you manage to get the standard to say that it will be done in the way your patent says it will be done.
this is basically a fun drinking game. You sit there for hours stoney faced saying "no" all day for the first day and explaining deep technical reasons why your competition's patent won't work in this sitation. Then in the evening you go out and get seriously drunk. Whilst drunk you start trading off what things each person really wants to get in to the standard. Then the next day, those who can still remember what was said get their way with the standard and only serious and proper persuasive arguments combined with good blackmail drinking photos are allowed to change the agreements of the previous night on pain of ostracism.
In telecomms standards this isn't even particularly immoral since the companies playing are all big boys who can take it. In the example before us we have Apple; about 9 on a scale of 1 to 10 for "intellectual property" evil and Nokia (about 7 or 9 but with a tendancy towards 10). Remember Apple is the company which inspired the League for Programming freedom [progfree.org]. In fact Apple is arguably worse than Microsoft (has done more in practice; but doesn't go in for unsubtle bully boy threats) and is only clearly less Evil than Qualcomm (rates 15 on our earlier scale of 1 to 10).
Whilst I'm definitely anti software patent, and strongly believe in controlling the influence of other patents, this is a lawsuit happening to a company that really really had it coming to them.
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Re:I'll ask it again (Score:5, Insightful)
Nokia is just angry that they are profits are down and Apple's profits are up.
Source: CNN Money
Profits tend to be down when people aren't paying you for your work. ;)
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Re:I'll ask it again (Score:5, Insightful)
Because standards that lag current technology by 17 years would go unused anyway? So instead of having to interoperate with one system and therefore needing to pay royalties to one group of patent-holders, any device manufacturer would have to either (1) play to a niche market, or (2) address the fragmented market by interoperating with many systems that each work differently, therefore needing to pay royalties to many groups of patent-holders?
Your question is reasonable when applied to standards that cover doing things for which there are alternatives unburdened by patents. In many areas (such as wireless telecommunications) that is not the case.
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Not for long ! (Score:5, Funny)
Once the iPhones will have all flown away [blogspot.com], Nokia will be left with noone to sue !!!
N900 (Score:5, Interesting)
What exactly does that mean? If you have patents on some technology, but then release a device that implements them with code that's GPL V2 licensed? Does it mean that anyone can now use those patents royalty free as long as they use the gpl'd code? Or does it somehow invalidate them? Would GPL V3 change the situation appreciably?
Re:N900 (Score:4, Insightful)
It sounds like these patents are more at the hardware level - GSM, UMTS (typo in summary), and WiFi are all hardware level patents. I don't think this really has anything to do with software or the GPL, but with Apple trying to use Nokia-patented hardware technologies royalty-free.
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Re:N900 (Score:4, Informative)
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There's That Progress in Science & the Useful (Score:5, Interesting)
If Nokia couldn't sue Apple, they certainly wouldn't have developed the technology to make phones they could sell. They certainly need longer than a year to break even on their investment before Apple could use the tech to sell more phones to the public. There's no way Apple and Nokia would work together to develop a technology they could both use in their phones, if their competitors could use it after several months work adapting it to their own products. Patents must be granted for any length of time, no matter how much profit that "temporary" artificial government-enforced monopoly makes while locking the invention out from use by the maximum number of people.
Right? No, that doesn't seem right to me, either.
Those 40 other... losers? (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe Apple thinks the patents won't stand up in court. Just because 40 other companies licensed them from Nokia, doesn't mean those other companies actually considered taking on Nokia. Are those other companies as big and brash as Apple? Apple has an estimated market cap of ~$180 billion, while Nokia has ~$50 billion.
Re:Those 40 other... losers? (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe those 40 other companies licensed them as part of a broader licensing package, rather than specifically. Without someone doing an analysis of the patents involved, and how Apple have implemented the similar features (patents protect a specific way of doing something, not the something), we won't know.
It'll end up with Apple paying a nominal fee and cross-licensing their multitouch and other mobile patents, so Nokia won't have to worry about them in the future, and thus can remain a relevant company in the mobile marketplace.
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Re:Those 40 other... losers? (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:Those 40 other... losers? (Score:4, Informative)
Only Nokia Siemens lost money. The rest is profitable. (also, I'd like to point out that looking at a single quarter...well, fixation on short term really helped with recent recession; really...)
Also, stop with this "iPhone is taking over" BS. Yes, Apple pushed the market forward, and they should be applauded for it. But outside US, Japan and few other countries, iPhone practically doesn't exist. It will be similar story as with Macs and PCs. Soon the biggest, by far, market for smartphone growth will be in dozens of countries you don't even hear about. Places where Apple doesn't even have the will to be present. Places where Macs and iPods never existed. Where Nokia completelly dominates. Where Symbian (and Android, I'd guess) will carve a huge userbase.
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Oh boy! A lawsuit story! (Score:5, Insightful)
Just like Cisco... (Score:5, Insightful)
This will be another Cisco event where the case eventually gets settled out of court for some undisclosed amount of money... nothing to see here.
Nothing to do with software !! (Score:5, Insightful)
Looking over these posts..it's amazing that how little people understand of the technology they use.
Nokia's patents pertaining to GSM technology and UMTS have absolutely nothing to do with a phones OS but rather the 7 layers under it.
Nokia has spent many millions over the years on GSM and UMTS. They are major contributors to the 3GPP standards body and have help in a measurable way to shape the technology.
How can people call Nolia a patent troll because some company comes in years after Nokia did all the work and steals the tech?? Are you kidding me?
I know it's Apple and the normal rules of the world should not apply, but for F's sake people. This is the reason we have patents! It's not some nonsense software patent.
Re:Nothing to do with software !! (Score:4, Insightful)
Granted, I don't know all the details, but the info I've seen about this makes it sound like these are all related to GSM, UTMS, and WiFi hardware. Since Apple does not produce this hardware themselves, why should they be responsible for licensing this from Nokia? The actual manufacturer of the related hardware (Broadcom and Infineon, IIRC) should be responsible.
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Re:Nothing to do with software !! (Score:5, Informative)
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how dare they are (Score:4, Funny)
not surprising (Score:5, Interesting)
Apple's R&D investment is far below industry average, and most of that is "D", not "R". Apple essentially doesn't publish and doesn't support university research. If all companies were as stingy as Apple when it comes to R&D, computer science research would be in deep trouble. Nokia, on the other hand, has the largest R&D investment in Europe, many times that of Apple.
Apple can only make nice products because other companies and universities have invested a hell of a lot of money and time inventing the things that Apple then assembles into products. That model is not sustainable, and I can see why companies like Nokia are getting litigious over it.
Re:not surprising (Score:4, Interesting)
Nokia's revenues are also twice as big as Apple's and they generate more profit per quarter than Apple. And considering Apple's revenues have doubled over the last 2 years, you have to give them some leeway for ramping up their R&D, which has in fact risen 55% in the last year. Apple isn't exactly resting on its or anyone else's laurels.
Dell is closer in revenues to Nokia than Apple is, yet Dell spends almost half of what Apple does on R&D. HP is almost 4x as big as Apple yet spends less than 3x as much as Apple on R&D.
In short, I think your statement that Apple spends well below the "industry average" (where are you getting your "industry average" numbers?) is specious at best. There are companies that spend greater percentages of their revenue on R&D and Nokia is certainly one of them, as is IBM and Microsoft, but Apple is no lightweight in the R&D department and NONE of those other companies are expanding their R&D spending as fast as Apple.
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here are the numbers (Score:5, Informative)
where are you getting your "industry average" numbers?
The numbers come from Booz Allen Hamilton and Business Week:
http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/techbeat/archives/2005/10/does_rd_spendin.html [businessweek.com]
Apple's R&D to sales ratio is 5.9%, computer industry average is 7.6%.
Apple is no lightweight in the R&D department and NONE of those other companies are expanding their R&D spending as fast as Apple.
Apple spends money development, but not much on research; Apple's research output according to the usual objective measures (publications and citations) is non-existent.
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Re:here are the numbers (Score:4, Insightful)
With all due respect, your statistic does not support your claim. "R&D to sales" is a measure of the effectiveness of a company's effort to convert R&D into sales. If that ratio is low, all the better. You originally claimed that "Apple's R&D investment is far below industry average". That claim has been refuted in the grandparent to this post. Now you want to divorce the "R" from the "D" to complain that Apple doesn't publish papers or have its papers cited. That's an entirely different subject.
What's your point? If you want to argue that Apple is doing a disservice to the world of technology, you need a better yardstick than "papers published". Need I remind you that Apple basically invented the home computer, basically invented the PDA, and has recently completely re-energized the smartphone industry? Those accomplishments have had obvious penumbral effects.
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Re:here are the numbers (Score:5, Interesting)
With all due respect, your statistic does not support your claim. "R&D to sales" is a measure of the effectiveness of a company's effort to convert R&D into sales. ... That claim has been refuted in the grandparent to this post
Oh, stop drinking the magic cool-aid and distorting reality. Apple's R&D investment is low in absolute numbers, relative to sales, and relative to company size. And Apple's research output is essentially non-existent by any objective measure.
Now you want to divorce the "R" from the "D"
I have consistently pointed out that Apple invests in "D" but almost nothing in "R".
Need I remind you that Apple basically invented the home computer, basically invented the PDA, and has recently completely re-energized the smartphone industry? Those accomplishments have had obvious penumbral effects.
Apple did none of those things. All their major products were copies of technologies and devices invented elsewhere, and Apple has gotten into trouble and disrepute over that more than once.
If you want to argue that Apple is doing a disservice to the world of technology, you need a better yardstick than "papers published".
I'm only pointing out that Nokia's lawsuit is consistent and plausible with what we know about Apple's actual R&D strategy.
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Once it popped into my head, I couldn't resist... (Score:4, Funny)
Getting sued for patent infringement?... There's an app for that!
Re:Two way street (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Two way street (Score:5, Insightful)
Popularity != Quality
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Re:Two way street (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Two way street (Score:4, Insightful)
Popularity != Quality
When talking about something as complex as a smart-phone, quality is not an objective measurement.
Linux, for example, is technically superior to Windows, but its 'gaming quality' is very poor.
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Re:Two way street (Score:5, Insightful)
Not that I've read the story or anything, but my guess is they made a bunch of the products that Apple has tucked in a shiny case with superior GUI. Apple may be standing on Nokia's shoulders here. Imagine you develop a teleportation device -- it would revolutionize the world. You patent it. Then Apple goes and builds a phone that you can point at an object and teleport it to a person with another phone, using your patent. They make billions of dollars because of it, but you're still broke because they didn't license your property.
Is this a problem? Only if you don't think ideas are cheap. People invent and patent things all the time. But that doesn't necessarily mean money in the bank, if you don't strike a deal to make that money. Invention is the very first step and patenting is a way to merely a way to protect your idea while you go look for financing to make it real.
Nokia made their product off their tech. It's not as popular as the iPhone. Do they deserve to get some of the iPhone's share of money?
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Re:Two way street (Score:5, Interesting)
You pointed out the most likely situation. Of those 40 companies some are chip makers, OEMs, tower builders, and telcos. What you get is a "triple dipping" situation where the "club" is demanding royalties from each part of the process. Chip maker has to have a patent for the "chip", OEM has to have a patent for the chip attached to an antenna using software, Tower builder has to have a patent to send and receive the signal, Telco has to have a patent to route the signal. Even though you have paid a patent on the "chip" that does everything and you put one at both ends, it doesn't count because you don't have the "whole" license... only the chipmaker's right to "build" the chip. You need to pay again to USE the chip.... This is how MP3 keeps being the undead patent zombie. They want to you pay to be "in the club" then you don't have to worry about such "technicalities" but then you usually have to cross-license ALL your stuff to get in.
Apple most likely went directly to Broadcom and AT&T and cross-licensed with just those two players to share the patents they had access to (and added another 100 just for iPhone). Now Nokia is upset the other two players are letting Apple in without "joining the club" first. It's all a game of contracts that were for "joining the club" but have loopholes all over that you have to play ball only with the club and certain players get "more fair" treatment than others.
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Re:Two way street (Score:4, Informative)
Are you kidding or do you really not know that it's not shipping yet?
It's funny how Nokia is seen as the evil 500 pound gorilla rather than a 500 pound penguin that puts demoscene videos in its ads [youtube.com].
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Re:Two way street (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple advocates may not want to play the popularity card. By that standard, MacOS must suck, cuz Windows derivatives are 18 times [hitslink.com] more popular.
C'mon, I don't even like Apple, and I know better than to try to equate market share with superiority. In both cases, there must be some other explanation.
Oh, yeah, marketing.
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Re:Two way street (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Two way street (Score:5, Informative)
Bullshit. If the Nokia N900 is so good, why are people buying 10x as many iPhones?
Because the N900 isn't being released until November, so people can't buy it yet. I have one, but then again, I work for Nokia. :)
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Re:Two way street (Score:5, Informative)
Incorrect sir. N810 lacked an exchange client. The N900 has full support for Exchange just like every other Nokia Smartphone: link [nokiausa.com]
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Re:Two way street (Score:5, Informative)
I'm assuming you're just trolling, but still...
1) The N900 isn't on the market yet. It's due to be released in the US next month, and later in the rest of the world's markets.
2) The N900 does have an Exchange client, according to their marketspeak. Considering rules regarding marketspeak matching reality on things like that, I'd assume that they speak the truth.
3) The iPhone is popular because it has the cool factor. If you want something that's actually useable, the iPhone isn't bad, but most people in business actually have a Crackberry.
4) While it's personal preference, I'm actually quite happy with my Android-running HTC Dream. All of the apps are free, it's reasonably fast for downloads/google maps, it came with a 2GB SD card (which is big enough, for now), and I've got it set up to poll my home e-mail/gmail on a regular basis. I've got all of the functionality of a Blackberry that I'd want, and then some. Android's the new kid on the block, but from what I've seen, it's a definite competitor to the iPhone's popularity.
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Re:Two way street (Score:5, Informative)
This is largely the point; phone companies gather 100s of patents that cover every aspect of their phones. These patents are often so broad that courts will not uphold them or will force them to be narrowed.
Still, the lawyers use these patents as a sort of negotiation tool. In this and many other industries, patent lawyers aren't lawyers as much as strategists; for all we know, Nokia is doing this as a defensive method because they know they are infringing on some Apple IP. Or, perhaps, they want some cool multitouch features in their next phone.
See this article for a fascinating analysis of Apple and Palm's patent war:
http://www.engadget.com/2009/01/28/apple-vs-palm-the-in-depth-analysis/ [engadget.com]
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Re:Two way street (Score:5, Informative)
Symbian is such a primitive operating system I doubt its possible for it to infringe any patent that didn't expire 10 years ago.
It's a realtime microkernel with an event-driven userspace API, a full POSIX implementation. Calling it primitive is quite astonishing.
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Re:So confused about who to root for... (Score:5, Informative)
Is nokia a patent troll?
Patent troll is a pejorative term used for a person or company that enforces its patents against one or more alleged infringers in a manner considered unduly aggressive or opportunistic, often with no intention to manufacture or market the patented invention.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_troll [wikipedia.org]
Doesn't sound like it.
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Re:So confused about who to root for... (Score:4, Insightful)
2. Every manufacturer apart from one pays Nokia for their hard work
3. Instead of paying (like everybody else) Apple chooses to steal from Nokia
4. Nokia sues Apple
Is it really patent trolling?
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Re:Presumed guilty (Score:5, Insightful)
Since nearly every other cell phone maker has licensed these patents and Apple was negotiating to license them chances are pretty good Nokia's claim is valid. Don't think it has much to do with Slashdot bias.
Presumably Nokia's licensing terms were unreasonable to Apple, this is just escalation of the "negotiating" process by one side or the other, Nokia thinks they will win and get more cash than Apple was offering in the negotiation, or maybe even Apple thought they will do better in court or with a counter suit over other patents so they provoked Nokia in to this.
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Re:Presumed guilty (Score:4, Insightful)
Nokia has been making mobile phones since they were the size of a large brick. And created or co-created much of the basic hardware technology used in mobile phones today...
I think i'll believe them when they say they invented and patented a bunch of hardware that apple swiped without proper payment.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia
In todays world they are a pretty straight dealing stand up company. (compared to most others)
If they say apple ripped them off. Apple most likely did.
Hey.. see what not screwing people over and not ripping everyone off gets you? People believe you when it's important.
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Re:Presumed guilty (Score:5, Informative)
No, they really are saying exactly that. Look at the sentence: "Endaget is reporting..." (statement of fact) "...that Nokia is suing Apple..." (statement of fact) "...because the iPhone infringes on 10 patents" (statement of fact).
I used to copy-edit at CNN, and this is a textbook case of convicting someone through sloppy writing. The summary should say "...because Nokia says the iPhone..." or "...because the iPhone allegedly..."
Of course, the other funny thing is that most every other patent story on Slashdot howls at the ridiculousness of patent cases, if not the implausibility of patents themselves.
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