Nokia Sues Apple Over Patents
October 22, 2009 | Stephane Dion
Well it was bound to happen sooner or later, few products reach the type of popularity that the iPhone has achieved without falling under legal scrutiny. Cell phone giant Nokia has made rumors official by filing patent infringement litigation against Apple, claiming that the iPhone infringes on several of their own patents.
The suit was filed today in Federal District Court in Delaware and alleges a total of 10 infringements all specific to the iPhone. Among these include GSM usage, 3G WCDMA, and wireless LAN standards.
Nokia pioneered GSM, which was a factor in AT&T’s exclusive network deal with the iPhone here in the US. Interestingly AT&T is not mentioned by Nokia in their legal action.
At present Nokia licenses the technology in question to over 40 companies and claims that Apple has not bothered to pay them for use of such patents as wireless data coverage, speech coding, security, and encryption methods.
The iPhone has been out for years with this tech, and Nokia is just now saying something? That’s ridiculous, and petty, and quite frankly looks desperate.
Here in Finland we don’t really have the Sueing culture which is common in the US. It seems that the direct negotiations with Apple have
been fruitless. It also takes time to gather the proof of the patent infrictions. As Nokia sells loads more phones than Apple, this is probably not that much about the money but more about the principle of paying from the technology which has been developed by Nokia.
As nokia has spent about €40billion in research and develpment in the field during the last decade, something like + – $6 per iPhone is really just pocket money for the corporation. Still the times as they are, probably motivated Nokia to speed up the action. If Nokia would be american, it would probably have persued this legal action much earlier instead of trying to establish an agreement on the subject with Apple within closed doors.
Greetings from Finland
The damn phone has been out for over 2 years. They are obviously not aggressively enforcing the rights violations they are alleging after so much time. Legally they might be within the time frame, but we all know that companies wait years so that settlements will be higher than ever.
LMFAO. ROCK ON APPLE / IPHONE