The battle between Espoo and Cupertino is heating up: Nokia is now claiming "virtually all" Apple products violate Nokia patents.
The patent infringement battle between Finland’s Nokia and Apple seems to be taking a dramatic turn, with Nokia now claiming to the U.S. International Trade Commission that “virtually all” Apple products—including iPhones, iPods, and Macintosh computers—violate Nokia patents.
The move may just be brinksmanship, and is the latest installment in a flurry of action between the two companies: first Nokia sued Apple, claiming the iPhone infringes on ten Nokia patents related to wireless communications technologies. A bit of a month later, Apple sued Nokia claiming several Nokia products infringe on some 13 Apple patents, many of which relate to Apple’s now-iconic iPhone.
Nokia’s new filing claims that “virtually all” of Apple’s iPhones, iPod line, and computer systems violate seven Nokia patents related to user interface, cameras, antennas, and power management technologies. If Apple were to be found guilty of infringement, it could be forced to pay Nokia hundreds of millions of dollars in royalties, plus penalties. Of course, the same goes for Nokia: the Finnish company—which is still the world’s largest maker of mobile handsets—could be forced to pay Apple for infringement.
Nokia says it expects the ITC will decide whether or not to pursue a case in about 30 days. Nokia is seeking damages and a ban on the sale of infringing Apple products.
Major patent disputes like these often take years to resolve, and are often settled out of court. Industry watchers see Nokia’s latest filing as a way to apply additional pressure on Apple in order to move the company towards a settlement or cross-licensing agreement.
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RSSYour girl Mary :)
The following is meant to be constructive criticism and not personal.
The lawsuit dance tells me nothing other than to confirm that these are big stake games played by ruthless people who have no intention of missing any opportunity to protect & nurture their company.
Perhaps we should reflect upon the fierce nature by which IBM, QUALCOMM and Texas Instruments (TI) defend patents. They even make money at the whole process.
These companies like many other US companies who litigate are not selecting between innovation and litigation, they choose to do both: innovate and litigate. This idea of selecting 'A' over 'B' is known as the fool's dilemma and skilled businesses just don't do it.
As to who has infringed whose patents - there is a court system that will determine that. Anything else is just idle speculation. Of course, those with better insight and confidence can always look at how negative outcomes might affect stock prices and benefit from that. An ITC injunction on Apple would be have a significant even if final litigation shows no infringement. TSMC's recent win over a competing semiconductor firm shows the cost of losing and having worked at a company where injunctions prevented us from bring our product into the US for an extended time period are not isolate cases.
Perhaps we have forgotten that innovation is not a US right or unique to US. Our parochial view has resulted in us being late to the game in adopting mobile technologies (Asia leads Europe leads US). Motorola used to be a big player and lost to Nokia. While we're giving away products in the US (bandwidth, applications, etc), the SMS advertising business in Asia is a huge market that we ignore both in terms of extracting dollars there and leveraging it into a US business opportunity. To succeed in the global market, don't assume that a US view is the world view. (So it is probably not too surprising that many/most iPhone developers don't release products outside of the US market - I don't have exact numbers just impressions from talking with globalization/localization companies.)
Just some thoughts from an international business development person with a huge quota to meet.
I invest my time and money where I get a return. And I think that for most business people, it is unclear where/how the money will be made resulting in experiments.
Apple currently has 1st mover advantage, a loyal following and great infrastructure. Certainly the ability to reduce development overhead/costs with less fragmentation is a bonus. Push notification versus background processing will be decided by the market and the types of applications that make money. Apple has been able to work around many of the architectural / marketing limitations since the initial launch of the iPhone including no desire to support native apps if I remember correctly.
The closed versus open system is an issue. (Personally I truly hate not being able to change battery and SIM cards but I still own an iPhone in addition to others because of employer requirements.) When I looked at investing in some companies that wanted to do Made4iPhone hardware, I was surprised at all of the royalty touch points added by Apple and testing and lack of a transparent approval process. It is expensive to get into hardware and investors need bigger returns when risk is systemically introduced. There is room for opening the environment: the explosion of integrated circuits occurred because access to a broader people resulted in more creative products.
Google - IMO - seems to have the proven track record of executing the 'fast follower' strategy when they are behind. They too will have course corrections to make (is it sustainable to have such a fragmented platform a la RIM etc.) But they are a driven bunch of very creative people who should only be discounted at their competitors' peril.
I don't count RIM out, but they need to quickly get their act together.
But it is unclear that people are making money and the anecdotal information on the web seems to range from zero to a few thousands with some spectacular exceptions. That is for the iPhone. But these are early days and clever people will figure out that people will pay to solve problems that they want eliminated or to provide a new benefit.
Exciting times in progress and ahead
With 110 apps on the iPod Touch, mixture of free and paid, has been 100% maintenance, trouble free, and so easy, I rarely turn it off. I wonder is the tight control of the App Store partially responsible for this? If so, as an end user I support the control.
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