Nokia Sues Apple over patent infringement
Usually, when you hear about patent infringement cases, it’s some patent troll company trying to squeeze money out of another company because the troll happened along something. From all appearences, that’s not the case this time. On their website yesterday, Nokia announced…
…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.
It further explains that just about every major vendor is currently licensing technology from Nokia, which isn’t too surprising, given that they’ve been in the cellular business since it’s birth in the late 1970’s.
Silicon Valley Insider has an interesting take on it…
Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone unit sales to date are around 34 million, so it would owe Nokia between $200-$400 million if Nokia is successful. Munster notes the $12 figure is unlikely.
For both of these companies, that’s a rounding error, and it makes Nokia look silly for trying to extract money from Apple while failing to build competitive products.
Of course in this case they (and many others) manage to miss the point, in that if Nokia DOESN’T defend its patents vigourously, then it’s bound to lose them. Similarly, without the basic technologies that Nokia invested 10s of billions of dollars in, the the mobile industry wouldn’t be where it is today. If Nokia doesn’t pursue this with Apple, it means all future iPhone sales will be counted out, and any derivatives of it, like the mystical iTablet thingie that gets hipsters frothing again every couple of months.
Another question oft raised is: “Why didn’t Nokia launch this lawsuit over 2 years ago, when the iPhone came out?”. That’s an easy answer even before more details came out. It’s very likely that Nokia was trying to work out a deal with Apple for some time, but Apple was balking at the price. Of course, less than an hour later that question was answered.
If this were some sort of out of the blue case, the accusations of Nokia trying to leech cash out of a successful competitor would have some merit, but the fact of the matter is that basically everybody is licensing Nokia technology.
Of course, when the shoe was on the other lawsuit foot, there was no shortage of articles encouraging Apple to sue Palm over the multitouch features of of the Pre in early 2009, ignoring that there’s two decades of prior art in existence when it comes to multitouch interfaces.
In the end, I think it’s pretty clear that even if this DOES see the inside of the courtroom, Apple is eventually going to have to settle, because there’s a mountain of precedent backing Nokia. It would be a waste of time and money to fight a losing battle.
