Nokia, the world’s largest mobile phone manufacturer, has said that it is suing its Apple for infringing patents on mobile phone technology for the iPhone.
Nokia is suing Apple claiming patent infringement for GSM, UMTS and wireless LAN (WLAN) standards.
Nokia licenses these technologies to other companies but says Apple has not paid for the right to use them ever.
Ilkka Rahnasto, Nokia’s VP Legal & Intellectual Property, says in a release (posted below), “The basic principle in the mobile industry is that those companies who contribute in technology development to establish standards create intellectual property, which others then need to compensate for…Apple is also expected to follow this principle. By refusing to agree [to] appropriate terms for Nokia’s intellectual property, Apple is attempting to get a free ride on the back of Nokia’s innovation.”
Last week Nokia reported its first quarterly loss in years, while Apple reported very favorable earnings and revenue. Nokia leads the world in handset shipments with a 38% market share while Apple, still relatively new to the mobile market, is gaining share at a rapid rate.
Update: PED Reports: According to Piper Jaffray’s Gene Munster, is 1% to 2% of the cost of an iPhone, or in the worst case, about $12 per unit.
This is the full release:
Espoo, Finland – Nokia announced that it has today filed a complaint against Apple with the Federal District Court in Delaware, alleging that Apple’s iPhone infringes Nokia patents for GSM, UMTS and wireless LAN (WLAN) standards. As a leading innovator in wireless communications, Nokia has created one of the strongest and broadest patent portfolios in the industry, investing more than EUR 40 billion in R&D during the last two decades. Much of this intellectual property, including the patents in suit, has been declared essential to industry standards. Nokia has already successfully entered into license agreements including these patents with approximately 40 companies, including virtually all the leading mobile device vendors, allowing the industry to benefit from Nokia’s innovation.
The ten patents in suit relate to technologies fundamental to making devices which are compatible with one or more of the GSM, UMTS (3G WCDMA) and wireless LAN standards. The patents cover wireless data, speech coding, security and encryption and are infringed by all Apple iPhone models shipped since the iPhone was introduced in 2007.
“The basic principle in the mobile industry is that those companies who contribute in technology development to establish standards create intellectual property, which others then need to compensate for,” said Ilkka Rahnasto, Vice President, Legal & Intellectual Property at Nokia. “Apple is also expected to follow this principle. By refusing to agree appropriate terms for Nokia’s intellectual property, Apple is attempting to get a free ride on the back of Nokia’s innovation.”
During the last two decades, Nokia has invested approximately EUR 40 billion in research and development and built one of the wireless industry’s strongest and broadest IPR portfolios, with over 10,000 patent families. Nokia is a world leader in the development of GSM technologies and its evolution to UMTS / 3G WCDMA as well as wireless LAN, which is also demonstrated by Nokia’s strong patent position in these technologies.
This looks like one of those battles where the lawyers get very rich and one company pays a lot of money to the other. I think this is one battle Apple could lose though unless they come up with some pretty strong evidence to refute Nokia’s position.
IT’S THE END OF APPLE AS WE KNOW IT, NOKIA FEELS FINE…
* Sung to the tune of “It’s the end of the world as we know it” by R.E.M.
Sounds like nokia are jealous to be honest. Their operating system is old, their phones are more over priced than any brand with no reasonable justification and high end phone users/enthusiasts just aren’t buying into it anymore, neither are the sellers. They may have pioneered the mobile phone industry, they may have a huge loyal customer base, but that doesn’t stand the test of time unless they stop rehashing their phones, patching on new, and may I say also stolen, ideas onto a out of date system that can’t handle it properly or compete with the next generation phones. why after two and a half years of the iPhone infringing on Nokias innnovation are they suddenly suing Apple I ask?
I would suspect that the reason its taken over 2 years for this to come to court is that Nokia have been monitoring the growth of the iPhone and waiting for the moment where growth = success. Also, as someone who has worked at large technology companies in the past, I can appreciate that Nokia have probably been asking Apple to negotiate with them on compensation for well over a year – As stated in comments all over this post, the Lawyers will get rich from this and Companies only enlist the lawyers input once all other communication channels have been exhausted. In future please think before you write – One flippant comment makes all technology commenter’s look stupid.
Feel free to reply and we can open a debate.
“companies who contribute in technology development to establish standards create intellectual property, which others then need to compensate for…”
“Apple is attempting to get a free ride on the back of Nokia’s innovation.”
I dunno, even if the timing does seem a bit convenient, the arguments still stand quite strong.
Apple probably hold just as many patents that Nokia is using, so I doubt this will go far.
http://bit.ly/exposeiphonedemo
Nokia needs to accept the fact that they are shite these days… please give me a break.
How the hell are you going to sue someone over mobile technology like that?! Intellectual property, my ass. Nokia can shove it up their asshole and stop being bitches.
Why do people need to pay royalties for wireless technology being used in all mobile devices when it is a standard… patent or not.
They need to embrace open technology and not be nazi fuckers.
I think you may be missing the point…
Other companies that use these technologies have to pay Nokia for the rights to use them.
It is technology that Nokia owns the rights to, it is theirs. If I invent a super amazing blender and sell the rights to use the technology in it to other companies, then one day your toaster producing company comes and decides to start making blenders using my technology without paying, I’d sue too. Even if my newer hardware was crap.
and I understand why you’d want them to ‘embrace open technology’ It’s an understandable argument that I completely agree with. But it’s not going to happen realistically. As amazing as open software development is it’s just not going to happen with hardware. That’s where a lot of peoples money comes from.
If it was Apples technology they’d be doing the same thing.. LG.. same thing.. Samsung.. Same thing. If it was mine… well.. being that I’m broke.. I’d do the same thing. These companies consider that a form of theft.. that’s why patents exist.. even though that system is fairly broken and gets abused often. It can be helpful to companies that don’t want people taking their technology.
Good for Nokia, if you have the patents protect them. Apple…. you really screwed the pooch on this one.
F(_)CK apple, make a phone that actually works for phone calls, and make a phone for more then one provider. . . and make a phone thats actually open …
good job nokia, give them a nice smack
I submitted this 2 hours before this article.http://digg.com/apple/Nokia_sues_Apple_for_infring …
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@mrpunman:I see what you did thereBest things Finnish are good for: making cellphones and rally drivers!
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Classic Nokia:http://dinofizz.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/nokia3 …I loved playing Snake on that thing
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DAMN, I FEEL BIGGER ALREADY!
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"Apple holds the big guns (as to whats hot in technology today)."Nokia seems to hold patents on a lot of useful things that make phones using Apple’s "big guns" work. So I’d say that Nokia have guns that are just as large if not larger than Apple.
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You can’t make very good wine out of sour grapes!
I think Nokia are just pissed because of late, their phones have been crap.
At my last upgrade, I picked a nokia over an iphone… big mistake! Now I’m stuck with it for 18 months :(
the only reason your stuck with that phone is because phone companies dont care one bit about you as a customer.
grreat……….. yeah.. thnks for posting …:)
Genius analysis – I advise to take up economics as a profession you obviously have a gift for it.
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So might makes right again eh ?
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If an inventor has a patent on something that them becomes adopted as standard they do not lose their legal rights to that patent.Every CD player manufacture still pays a royalty to Phillips and Sony the inventors – likewise all blu ray manufactures pay a similar levy to Sony.If they don’t they loose the right to manufacture goods using those technologies and open themselves to legal action.
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Except any of those patents have nothing to do with what you just said. GSM, UTMS, WLAN are things all phones have, and everybody has to pay royalties who use them.Although i would thought it would be very unwise to sue apple, as they have a massive accumulation patents which they will just fire back with.
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It’s cool to be on the apple hate bandwagon.
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Oracle, Apple, and Google executives did have each other on there boards. Except for google and apple now.
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"Apple fanboys flame the living fuck out of the company being sued."Give an example? Everybody hates patents in tech.
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I didn’t know that. I just knew that Steve Jobs was the wedding photographer for Larry Ellison, the CEO of Oracle/fourth richest person in the world/avid critic of Microsoft.I see it as Apple/Google/Oracle vs. HP/Microsoft/IBM.
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Read it in the agent’s voice from Matrix, "What good is a phone, when it doesn’t have the ability to call."Good Luck Apple, you’re gonna need it.
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Atleast they don’t say, No, you don’t need it.
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That’s what I am talking about, if something is a "Standard" then it should not be patentable as everyone in that field is required to abide by it. Taking the CD theme, Phillips and Sony now have a monopoly on the concept of the CD because they own the patents to the standard.If I decided to want to get into manufacturing something based on a standard I should not have to pay to use what the governing body has decided the standard for the item is.
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No you’ve missed the point. Companies spend HUGE amounts of money in Research and development on the hope that the public will want to buy in their products in large numbers.And to protect the investment they use patents to ensure no one can steal, or otherwise use without permission, their invention.If those products becomes adopted as ’standard’ as with Chipsets, CDs, VHS, Blu ray, SACD or what ever they allow other companies to use the technology under licence.Now there are ways around this such as reverse engineering but that too takes time and money and if you can reverse engineer a product so you can compete on price would protect your investment with a patent to stop some other manufacture stealing your work.Now do you understand ?
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I was a nokia user and you know what I got sick about their phones and i agree with the point that are over priced, wut ever, i change my nokia for a blackberry and i luv it. On the other hand the iphone sucks, i mean it is not as functional as other mobile phones… so Nokia have fun suin’ Apple and seems that nokia has all the rights…
E61i ..
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That’s exactly what I was thinking. All of the wireless chips in the iPhone are made by other companies like Broadcom, not Apple. And all of the software in the iPhone OS is all owned by Apple since a lot of it was ported from desktop OS X.
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@virtualballvirtualball : Actually, webkit is based on khtml, which was developed for KDE, using Qt, a technology that Nokia now owns. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webkit
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I understand how it works sometimes, I just don’t believe that something being put forward as a standard should still be allowed to be the IP of just one company. A standard is supposed to be the basis for compatibility, it should therefore be open to everyone so that the products they make meet the standard, or are compatible with the standard. The original developers of the standard get the added benefit of being the first to produce said product, normally as they are ready to manufacture it already, limited to no retooling costs for production, and the name recognition for developing said product/idea which can be used to boost sales. The way some of these standards are done is like the W3C charging you to write a web page in HTML 4.0 because you are using the HTML standard.
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The lawsuit is over hardware patents.
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+1
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What is Iphone without Nokia’s patents?
It’s only Ipod touch
How can anyone make an argument on this based on wether they like Nokia or not? What kind of unintelligent ranting is that?
Nokia invested more on developing mobile technology back in the days when it was considered to be only for businesses. Thanks to their efforts and billions of dollars we can have seamless communication all around the world. Over 40 mobile phone manufacturers sees this and have contracts with Nokia allowing them to use the inventions. Many of them are cheaper than Nokia so they must be rather fairly priced. If memory serves me right it Nokia receives some 2 dollars per each GMS phone produced.
Suing Apple has nothing to do with being a sore loser. In fact, Nokia is not a loser in the mobile industry, quite the opposite, but that is beside the point. The point is innovations should be compensated, why else would anyone invest hundreds of millions into research? And the timing is due to negotiations between the companies. I am sure Nokia took this up with Apple two years ago and I am rather surprised they have moved this quickly to this point. It could have taken a lot longer.
Please, spare your comments if your only argument is that Apple is cool.
The fee Nokia wants to charge new entrants is an unfair barrier which seems to me to be anti-competitive. Maybe the EU should investigate Nokia and other members of the "cartel".
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Here is what I wrote to their feedback form:"I would like to ask you as to whether the EU has reviewed your 15 percent charge of the "sale" price of handsets for new entrants into the GSM market and whether the EU considers it to be an unfair and anti-competitive move? Should I, as an EU and Finnish citizen launch a complaint to the EU concerning this cartel of yours?If your goal was to collect money for your initial investment in GSM technology, why is the fee not lodged against the chipset manufacturers instead of your direct competition? Why is the fee a percentage of the sale price of handsets? Both of these facts leads me to believe that your main goal is not to recoup investments but rather discourage entry into the market which would be considered anti-competitive in most markets. Given that you also have a cartel of companies which are exempt from this charge, I think the EU should definitely launch an investigation into your business practices."
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It’s called a standard because it’s NOT propriatary. Can’t sue someone for using established standards. Hell, the EU is trying to solidify cell phone charger standards right now. Don’t think any company that contributes gets to halt progress because they think people should give them money.
My guess as to why it has taken 2 years for the law suit to come about:
“Nokia said in its court filing it had made several price offers to Apple on per patent and on portfolio basis, but the US firm had declined those.”
Probably the reason why only Nokia is suing Apple:
“An Ericsson spokesman said on Friday the company has a licensing deal with Apple.”
So why would you strike a deal with one major company to use their technologies but not all? Seems like Apple dropped the ball on this and I believe Nokia will be compensated what they are owed.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/10/24/2723042.htm