yea, but I remeber that it lasted like more than 3 years or 5, I think it was one of the reasons that Nokia stayed away or I'm wrong

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/09/10/...ment-In-iPhone
"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."

Press release: http://www.nokia.com/press/press-rel...newsid=1349562
(slashdotted)

Any nokian commentary?

And this case won't be hitting the courts before 2011, at the very best. For anyone who doesn't know how patent suits go:

• Nokia files claims against Apple [court filing yet has to be leaked, only then will we know if the filing has any power or not. Considering Nokia released the press-release today, they filed recently, probably in the past couple of weeks]
• Apple files counter-claims against Nokia [Counter claims will depend on the actual filing Nokia provided, expect 6 months between the two, so that the lawyers have the time to research which previous cases could be used at their advantage. Claims that will probably be used: unfair monopoly, non-enforceability of patents, non-disclosure of patent content while in the same group, etc ]
• Neither sides will back down
• First ruling will happen on both claims, this will probably be around mid-2011. The first ruling basically means neither sides accept the claims, and the trial really begins.
• Everyone sleeps for 6 months.
• Escalation and re-escalation, appeal, and re-appeal, over and over again.

There could be good money involved, sure, but usually a patent suit is more to future-proof yourself, and make sure others don't commit the same mistake than any kind of benefit. Unless the payout is massive, the costs of such a suit, more often than not, completely invalidates the "profitability".

Edit: To go into a bit more detail about what Apple will probably counterclaim (this is pure speculation):

Apple will counterclaim against Nokia's claims, by filing a declaration of unenforceability, monopolisation, attempted monopolisation, fraud, and violation of the California's unfair competition law (not sure about this one, can Apple file for this considering the court is in Delaware?).

Basically, in order to survive a motion to dismiss, Nokia's claims must "contain sufficient factual matter, accepted as true, ‘to state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face.'" (Ashcroft v Iqbal, all the way up to Bell v some other corp)

Nokia's pleading will need to contain "factual content that allows the court to draw the reasonable inference that [Apple] is liable for the alleged misconduct".

This will go on and on. Every time either Nokia or Apple will file a claim or counterclaim, or move to dismiss a claim or counterclaim, the other party will have 30 days (or any time limit imposed by the court) to produce new claims and counter claims, until the court estimates it has enough information to deny or grant any or all of the claims.

As any Californian company, Apple will file separate answers and counterclaims in order to weigh up their declaration of unenforceability of the cited patents. This used to work 10 years ago, however these days, because the counterclaims are extremely similar, they will be merged into one (again, not sure this works in Delaware).

I believe that a monopolisation and attempted monopolisation claim will go very far. It's easy to see that using the Sherman Act, Apple could very easily defend themselves from any of Nokia's claims (and even though not usable in court, Nokia auto-proclaimed that the patents they hold have become Industry Standards [see press release from today]). The offense of monopolisation has two elements: the possession of monopoly power in the relevant market, and the willful acquisition and maintenance of that power as distinguished from growth or development as a consequence of a superior product, business drive or historic accident.

Considering that Nokia has been in talks with Apple regarding these claims before filing them officially, and the fact that both Apple and Nokia are part of the same groups (can't remember which), Nokia may have been obligated to disclose their intellectual property rights to the cited Patents and failed to do so, or the failure to disclose was deceptive, or a standard was developed upon the cited Patents (IP) and has been adopted by the relevant market.

Anyway, enough of that, I'm hungy.

Deleted URL to this post.

Crapitall, I looked. I *looked*, darnit!!

Ah well. Nevermind. Go about your business.

The fact that it went that long actually prevented Nokia from doing in the US CDMA market what they have been trying to do the GSM market with unlocked handsets. If they could have gotten those agreements earlier, we'd not be having conversations, as often, about unlocked devices (in the USA).

It doesn't matter though that you fight a long fight, only that you can. And considering the international scope of the IP patents in question that Apple is using, I'd not be surprised if Nokia gets some kind of settlement offer pretty quickly. Apple, speicfically Jobs, doesn't like when life gets in the way of what he plans.

This won't end like Nokia/Qualcomm - that was an argument over the basis of cellular wireless from several points (network, radios, transmitters, etc.) - this is one over how to apply those functions. And you can bet Qualcomm is watching this closely. Because in some of those cases with those GSM/radio patents, one side is held by Nokia and the other by Qualcomm. No mobile maker wins out from having to license one or the other here (another reason why Google wanted to go for white-space technologies here and abroad).

Multitouch, yea whatever. Call me when that injunction comes that says carriers cannot utilize Apple mobiles on their network due to patent restructions. Let's multitouch the possibilities there - and nope, there's no app for solving that one either.

At least solarion realized it wasn't Off Topic.

But it is. Has nothing at all to do with Maemo, the tablets, the OSes that run on them, etc. Only common thread is "Nokia". Should we be talking about the N97 firmware update in General too?

Can a mod merge this with solarion's thread in General? It really isn't Off Topic, and I sooo want to thank some sensible posts...

Feh. Methinks there are differing ideas of what "General" can mean. Personally I have no issue with high level Nokia discussions taking place there, especially ones that can ripple down into Maemo as this one can now.