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Nokia Tells Reddit It Infringes Some Patents in Lead-Up To IPO (bloomberg.com) 33

An anonymous reader shares a report: Reddit, the social media platform gearing up for an initial public offering this week, said Nokia has accused it of infringing some of their patents. Nokia Technologies, the company's licensing business, sent Reddit a letter on Monday with the claims, and Reddit is evaluating them, according to a filing made Tuesday. Nokia's claims come as Reddit prepares for an initial public offering in an effort to raise hundreds of millions of dollars. The company has been working toward a listing for years, and its public market debut this week is set to become a high-profile addition to the year's roster of newly and soon-to-be public companies. Reddit said in the filing: "On March 18, 2024, Nokia sent us a letter indicating they believed that Reddit infringes certain of their patents. We will evaluate their claims. As we face increasing competition and become increasingly high profile, the possibility of receiving more intellectual property claims against us grows.

In addition, various 'non-practicing entities,' and other intellectual property rights holders have asserted in the past, and may attempt to assert in the future, intellectual property claims against us and have sought, and may attempt to seek in the future, to monetize the intellectual property rights they own to extract value through licensing arrangements or other settlements."

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Nokia Tells Reddit It Infringes Some Patents in Lead-Up To IPO

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  • by alvinrod ( 889928 ) on Tuesday March 19, 2024 @09:51AM (#64327779)
    Who could have guessed Nokia had a patent on using unpaid volunteers to work as admins by being petty tyrants over their digital fiefdoms?

    I have no idea what this is actually about since the summary includes no details. The Bloomberg article doesn't want to render all of the content on my phone (presumably it wants me to log in to read it) so that's no good either. I know that expecting the editors to do anything is asking for a lot, but if anyone else knows what this is about, it would be illuminating.
  • You managed to screw up your own pump-and-dump scheme. You played yourself!
  • by Midnight Thunder ( 17205 ) on Tuesday March 19, 2024 @10:14AM (#64327831) Homepage Journal

    There is a lot of NSFW content on Reddit, and for that I am happy. If they did anything to start becoming puritan to satisfy their new shareholders, then I feel they'd be damaging the brand.

    • by bjwest ( 14070 )

      ... If they did anything to start becoming puritan to satisfy their new shareholders, then I feel they'd be damaging the brand.

      They damaged their brand long ago when they started making changes leading up to the IPO. I came to Reddit from Digg due to their changes, I guess I'll be looking to move on from Reddit soon. I already spend less time than I used to browsing Reddit.

      • Take a look at Lemmy or Mastodon.

        The activity-pub sites are still trying to get their sea legs but growing, especially since Threads is technically comparable with their systems. My instance is planning on de-federating threads as soon as they open those gates, and we still worry about getting Embrace/Expand/Eliminated. The fact that the services are a patchwork of projects with a few larger instances makes it feel like the internet around 2014 (very nostalgic for me).

      • The main one I can think of was the third-party clients. Were there other points of note?

  • Asking for a friend...
  • Do they actually sell anything or have they pivoted to patent troll full time?

    • by mysidia ( 191772 )

      They're a telecom equipment manufacturer -- they make devices you will probably never see as a consumer, because they're boxes in datacenters that run computer networks and telecom carrier networks.

      It would seem their consumer device sales business is replaced By one that exist to extract values from other companies through Patent infringement complaints and the resulting license fees, or litigation.

    • by keltor ( 99721 ) *
      Huh? They are a $24 billion company. They are still one of the main telecom network vendors. They basically did two things: sold the licensing of their "brand" for cash and then sold their Mobile Phone business to Microsoft (with a license of the name, it's since been licensed to HMD.) They have a ton of fundamental telecom patents and of course those are always core to Wifi/5G/etc/etc/etc and so they license them. Ericsson is much the same kind of company. Nokia though has also become a NPE licensing
      • The history of that part of the business is interesting. Its comprised of:

        Historical Nokia efforts ( because they did everything including tires)
        Nokia Erikson Efforts ( once a joint venture that Nokia ended up buying)
        Motorola Networking ( all of their historical cell communication patents included)

        I also wouldn't be surprised if this was one of the old Motorola patents for something really really dumb that got thrown in as part of the break up. They had business units doing the absolute dumbest thing imag
    • Do they actually sell anything or have they pivoted to patent troll full time?

      They are the 3rd largest telco vendor Worldwide. The largest ones being Huawei and Ericsson (which one if first and which one is second varies quarter to quarter). ZTE is a distant fourth.

      Nokia is the Amalgamation of the telco part of nokia + the telco part of Siemens + The telco part of motorola + Alcatel-Lucent (which in turn was Alcatel + Lucent).

      You may recall that at some point Nokia, Siemens and Alcatel manufactured their own phones, with their own OS and their Own Software. I can not say anything abo

  • This strikes me as a bit of a shakedown, settle with out patent claims or we'll screw up your IPO by creating a new potential liability.

    I'm assuming this is a somewhat standard practice, both with patents and other legal liabilities, and probably isn't a big issue for investors either way.

    • This strikes me as a bit of a shakedown, settle with out patent claims or we'll screw up your IPO by creating a new potential liability.

      I'm assuming this is a somewhat standard practice, both with patents and other legal liabilities, and probably isn't a big issue for investors either way.

      Well, is not really pay up or else. Is more:

      "We suspected we could sue you for a long time, but you had no money, so it would cost more in lawyers+executive focus&distraction+Bad publicity than what we could get trying to squeeze a stone. Now that you finally have money, suing you is worth our while"

      • Well, is not really pay up or else. Is more:

        "We suspected we could sue you for a long time, but you had no money, so it would cost more in lawyers+executive focus&distraction+Bad publicity than what we could get trying to squeeze a stone. Now that you finally have money, suing you is worth our while"

        If that was the play, I would have expected Nokia to spring this after a successful IPO.

        • Well, is not really pay up or else. Is more:

          "We suspected we could sue you for a long time, but you had no money, so it would cost more in lawyers+executive focus&distraction+Bad publicity than what we could get trying to squeeze a stone. Now that you finally have money, suing you is worth our while"

          If that was the play, I would have expected Nokia to spring this after a successful IPO.

          Do you realize that most analysts think that this IPO will be a flsh on the pan, have a one or to day frenzy for the share price then to crash?... right?

    • This strikes me as a bit of a shakedown, settle with out patent claims or we'll screw up your IPO by creating a new potential liability.

      Back in the early days of the personal computer explosion there was a patent for the "XOR cursor" which I hear was used as a trolling operation. Story goes that every time a new hi-tek company was in that sensitive period just as they're about to go public, they'd get a notice that they were believed to be violating that (even if whatever they were doing didn't even involv

  • by doc1623 ( 7109263 ) on Tuesday March 19, 2024 @11:08AM (#64327997)

    I started messing with Reddit really late, but one thing I thought it would be good for is questions regarding dealing with Companies and/or Organizations but I get no replies on stuff like that (or very few)

    .

    Some subs don't even allow complaints and/or issues. 1 made you post in a specific place that couldn't receive replies. I'm guessing allot of mods work for the companies and/or industries but I don't really know.

    Examples:
    1. VA issues, was hoping to get help from the larger veteran community.

    2. T-Mobile: My house online says "5G Ultra" but from both talking to T-mobile and from my own research, I'm in a dead zone. I thought, as I'm in the middle of a large metroplex, if I brought it to their attention they would fix it but they don't care. Nor have they changed the site that says 5G ultra. From the agents: my street and some blocks south, have only 4G and it's only really supposed to work outside of the house from their own internal maps.

    If anyone knows a place that's better to ask advice on issues like those let me know. I'm at a loss.

    P.S.: I am ignorant on most social media. It just never had great appeal to me. No, I'm not a "boomer", but I'm not young either. Case in point, I prefer forums, where they still exist :P

    • by drhamad ( 868567 )
      I honestly don't even know what you're asking for 2, and obviously you didn't actually ask anything on 1.
      Back to 2, though, if you said something similar on reddit... what do you expect people to respond with? "that sucks"? Like, what were you looking for?
      • by Anonymous Coward

        you cant really be this stupid?

        • lol you are consistent if nothing else. Pure Troll. I'm guessing your the same person as the "Anonymous Coward 666" or are you just another?
      • I know this is late but both 1 and 2 where examples of situations/scenarios that I was asking questions on the reddit platform, both were too involved to post completely here, and not the question I was asking of slashdot readers. Maybe, no one else has similar issues, that would have been an answer. I would have loved to see post that did have similar issues and got responses, so I could better emulate what those posters did. In the example scenarios, I was asking about possible next steps on reddit, if t

  • Thoughts and ideas should not be patentable, only actual implementations. It's like saying 5 times 5 equals 25, then suing anyone who comes up with a formula that equals 25. Copy write your code, but fuck off if you think you can bottle up the idea that said code performs and/or results in.
    • Thoughts and ideas should not be patentable, only actual implementations. It's like saying 5 times 5 equals 25, then suing anyone who comes up with a formula that equals 25. Copy write your code, but fuck off if you think you can bottle up the idea that said code performs and/or results in.

      Nokia did/implemented (and patented) some pretty forward thinking stuff in the Consumer cellphone area in the ~'95 ~ ~'10 timeframe (one could say things that were ahead of their time), that includes but is not limited to mobile chat, bulleting boards moderation (including but not limited to keep refreshing the feed, keeping a coherent view, push notifications et al). Some of those implementations were sucessfull on a regional basis, but forgotten on the midst of internet time, some implementations were not

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