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Apple lawsuit accuses Nokia of being at core of patent licensing conspiracy

Nokia's legal action against Apple appears that it may be a defensive measure, as Apple has also filed suit against nine Nokia-aligned patent aggregators, alleging that the group is guilty of trying to squeeze money out of Apple with abusive licensing terms for standards-essential patents.

On Tuesday, Apple filed an antitrust lawsuit against the group, accusing them of assisting Nokia with a plan to "extract and extort exorbitant revenues" from Apple and other mobile device manufacturers. Apple noted that a band of companies, including Nokia, have conspired to "use unfair and anticompetitive patent assertions to improperly tax the innovations of cell phone makers."

In its suit, Apple accuses Nokia of becoming a "patent troll" since the company's sale of its mobile business to Microsoft. As a result of the deal, Apple claims that Nokia has no need to be involved in any "patent peace" process, and is "bent on exploiting the patents that remain" in Nokia's hands.

Patent agencies named as Nokia co-conspirators in this case and others include Acacia and Conversant as primary offenders, with two Acacia subsidiaries, Helsinki Memory Technologies, Inventergy, Sisvel, Vringo, and WiLan also involved in the scheme over time.

"These serial assertions and litigations have forced Apple to incur multiple millions of dollars in defense costs," writes Apple in the complaint. "Precisely the sort of leverage that Acacia and Conversant intended when they agreed to conspire with Nokia."

Apple's accusations of misbehavior reach back to the 2011 patent deal with Nokia which ended all patent suits worldwide between the pair. According to Apple, the initial deal set the table for "an illegal patent transfer scheme" with other companies to "breach FRAND obligations and bring additional patent-related abuses" such as the recent bad-faith negotiations with the companies holding the patents.

One of the nine patent aggregators, Acacia, has sued apple 42 times in 10 years, with its most recent, and limited, success in September.

Apple is seeking that the named patent aggregators be prevented from enjoining Apple on standards-essential patent issues, and expenses of the suit.

Apple's suit, which presumably launched Nokia's Wednesday legal assault, was filed on Monday in the U.S. District Court for California.



16 Comments

ericthehalfbee 14 Years · 4489 comments

There are some here who think license fees for patents should be based on the final cost of the entire product and not the component itself.

On the flip side there are people who think Apple isn't owed money on the profits of an entire Samsung phone for infringing design patents that are only a portion of the entire phone.

Quite the dilemma.

3 Likes · 0 Dislikes
gatorguy 14 Years · 24654 comments

Currently Nokia is asserting “32 patents in suit across all of the actions, covering technologies such as display, user interface, software, antenna, chipsets and video coding."

And that's not all. "
Nokia is in the process of filing further actions in other jurisdictions.”

Might be a wild ride. . . 

1 Like · 0 Dislikes
EsquireCats 9 Years · 1268 comments

There are some here who think license fees for patents should be based on the final cost of the entire product and not the component itself.

On the flip side there are people who think Apple isn't owed money on the profits of an entire Samsung phone for infringing design patents that are only a portion of the entire phone.

Quite the dilemma.

Try not to draw comparisons between FRAND and design patents. FRAND patents have been granted to a standards body for non-discriminatory licensing terms: lawsuits come about because the parties couldn't reach a licensing agreement, usually because a nefarious patent holder is asking for an absurd share of the sale price.

Design patents are not specifically licensed to any 3rd party and they have a significant effect on the end look/feel/design of a product - i.e. the reasons why a consumer may choose one device over another. Yes the US supreme court recently decided that a design patent infringement should not incur the full profit of an infringing device - but relief should be sought nonetheless, just calculated differently.

4 Likes · 0 Dislikes
VernonDozier 9 Years · 26 comments

There are some here who think license fees for patents should be based on the final cost of the entire product and not the component itself.

On the flip side there are people who think Apple isn't owed money on the profits of an entire Samsung phone for infringing design patents that are only a portion of the entire phone.

Quite the dilemma.

Well, you have two factors at work here.  First, let's face facts.  Apple has an over-reliance on PR and the press.  Today, there exist 573,000 stories and links on the web about the original cross-licensing agreement. When that many articles exist, people will generally draw the conclusion that they licensed all the patents. 

Apple developers are also likely to study all patents; and code patented ideas into Apple's software.  Apple under Tim Cook is incredibly predictable.  Apple can complain, pretend it's a victim, file a lawsuit, and parade it's CEO out to give a speech on how it doesn't need corrective action.   That's how Tim Cook's Apple works and also why people who work in New York Finance like the company so much.  It seems to work well for their stock valuation.

As a second item, hiring attorneys to scour through the patent database for ideas which people and companies were willing to pay real money to patent (and disclose) makes it easy for Apple's R&D budget to find ideas for products.  You'll notice that Apple is accusing Acacia, a Research Company, for anti-trust..?   Sounds like Acacia has some real good R&D researchers and ideas which Apple wants to copy.

But still, patents should be paid for; especially if the company is the size of Apple.   As an example, I could conceivably see Apple not wanting to pay for patents related to phone payments.  In 1999, Nokia, Visa, and Finland-based NordBanken had this technology on a Nokia 7710 phone series in Europe... Back then, Visa had a second SIM card Chip; which Apple probably calls a "Secure Enclave".   Then, Apple re-introduced it as "new technology" with much bravado, and announced the payment platform with Chase Bank and called it ApplePay.   Still, my guess is that Chase didn't develop the technology; but instead, Nokia did, Apple copied it, then approached chase so it could market the iPhone features to its customers.  It was a feature which people didn't know they wanted or even needed, but Apple most likely found the patents and decided to copy another thing someone else did; and slap a fruit on it.

2 Likes · 0 Dislikes
ericthehalfbee 14 Years · 4489 comments

There are some here who think license fees for patents should be based on the final cost of the entire product and not the component itself.

On the flip side there are people who think Apple isn't owed money on the profits of an entire Samsung phone for infringing design patents that are only a portion of the entire phone.

Quite the dilemma.

Well, you have two factors at work here.  First, let's face facts.  Apple has an over-reliance on PR and the press.  Today, there exist 573,000 stories and links on the web about the original cross-licensing agreement. When that many articles exist, people will generally draw the conclusion that they licensed all the patents. 

Apple developers are also likely to study all patents; and code patented ideas into Apple's software.  Apple under Tim Cook is incredibly predictable.  Apple can complain, pretend it's a victim, file a lawsuit, and parade it's CEO out to give a speech on how it doesn't need corrective action.   That's how Tim Cook's Apple works and also why people who work in New York Finance like the company so much.  It seems to work well for their stock valuation.

As a second item, hiring attorneys to scour through the patent database for ideas which people and companies were willing to pay real money to patent (and disclose) makes it easy for Apple's R&D budget to find ideas for products.  You'll notice that Apple is accusing Acacia, a Research Company, for anti-trust..?   Sounds like Acacia has some real good R&D researchers and ideas which Apple wants to copy.

But still, patents should be paid for; especially if the company is the size of Apple.   As an example, I could conceivably see Apple not wanting to pay for patents related to phone payments.  In 1999, Nokia, Visa, and Finland-based NordBanken had this technology on a Nokia 7710 phone series in Europe... Back then, Visa had a second SIM card Chip; which Apple probably calls a "Secure Enclave".   Then, Apple re-introduced it as "new technology" with much bravado, and announced the payment platform with Chase Bank and called it ApplePay.   Still, my guess is that Chase didn't develop the technology; but instead, Nokia did, Apple copied it, then approached chase so it could market the iPhone features to its customers.  It was a feature which people didn't know they wanted or even needed, but Apple most likely found the patents and decided to copy another thing someone else did; and slap a fruit on it.

Quite the revisionist history you have there. Apple Pay is based on the EMVco tokenization standard developed by Europay, Mastercard and Visa. Nokia had nothing to do with it. Your comment is complete BS.

8 Likes · 0 Dislikes