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Apple Licenses Nokia Patents, Ending Lawsuits

Shivetya said:
Uh, no.

More likely Apple realized that in the US they could persist in court nearly forever dragging it out but were going to get curb stomped in Europe and elsewhere overseas.

You don't settle and pay the other guy if you're right. Especially when you have such a large amount of cash to work from. You settle when you know that pile of cash would make any settlement very expensive.
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You couldn't be more wrong.

In business settlements are made all the time, even if one party appears to be in the right and would get a judgement in their favor.

It is just smart business and cheaper to go on and negotiate a good deal. These suits can carry on for years, so whatever you'd eventually gained you paid for already.

As pop eye wrote companies use lawsuits as negotiating tactics.

In the sense neither one of them cares who is called the winner or loser.

Why the press or anti Apple or anti Nokia people need to determine a winner or loser is beyond me.

Headlines to sell more papers?
 
cliveren13 said:
If it wasnt for NOKIA there would be no apple i love my IPHONE 4 thanks to Nokia this phone isd possible and every cell phone maker in the world except probably Motorola who has been around a long time owes Nokia its ok to be an Apple fan boy but right is right nokia doesnt need Apples patents Apple needs Nokias patents to continue to inovate for the upcoming Iphone 5.
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Nokia doesn't need Apple's patents, but they do need Apple's money. Their profitability is terrible.

Once Nokia was a proud name and a leader. Now they are selling nothing in quantity except commodity products with razor-thin margins. As a once-time leader in cellular handsets, they still own a lot of valuable intellectual property that is needed to built a modern handset. Good for them. Licensing revenues are what is keeping the lights on in Nokia these days.
 
Oletros said:
And Nokia said this was not true, so?

Who is telling the truth? Do you know?
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As I recall from reading the court filings (months ago), Nokia was pretty careful about *not* explicitly saying Apples claims in that regard were false. They put a different spin on the situation (obviously), but I don't recall them claiming Apple was lying about anything in their filing.
 
mdriftmeyer said:
kdarling said:
3) Apple's patent countersuits were not going well. ITC members had written opinions that Nokia had not infringed on Apple patents.
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Sorry, but #3 is flat wrong. All but 2 of NOKIA's patent filings were thrown out by the ITC Court rulings. Only 2 patents did the ITC review panel agree to review.
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Different topics. You're talking about a few Nokia patents; my #3 was about Apple's countersuit patents: ITC staff says Nokia did not violate Apple patents

More importantly, the ITC just decided last week to re-investigate Nokia's claims against Apple. No doubt that was partly behind Apple's decision to make a deal.

Again, there was no doubt that Apple needed to license Nokia's patents. Apple was simply delaying as long as possible in order to make their profit margin look better for the short term, while denying Nokia helpful income.
 
KnightWRX said:
And you're privy to the agreement ? :rolleyes:

Seriously, this spinning of "Apple won!" is ridiculous. First Nokia was never trying to exempt Apple from anything, they wanted Apple to license the patents. Extortion is quite a big accusation given we never had the details of what Nokia asked for and the fact that Apple, unlike other players, didn't have any patents in the GSM Patent pool (so they should be paying more, they are contributing less).

In the end, this is what was going to happen all along, a negotiated deal. Nokia had been negotiating with Apple since 2007 and the lawsuit was just another negotiation tactic.
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Can't argue with anything here, except that we do have details of what Nokia asked for originally from the court filings. Some of the details were disputed, but a careful reading at the time left the impression that Nokia never actually denied pressing for access to Apple's patents as part of the license cost.

KnightWRX said:
Anyone spinning this as a "win" or "loss" by Apple or Nokia is wrong.
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Apple likely won by getting a RAND license (as required by the standards body rules), and Nokia won by getting a license agreement signed with Apple.

For all the people claiming that Nokia 'lost' or Apple 'lost', remember Life is not a zero-sum game. For one party to win the others do not have to lose.
 
Oletros said:
Do you know what the original terms were?

We only know that Apple said one thing and Nokia another, wew don't know nor the original terms nor the settled terms.
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why do you keep on repeating yourself? If you don't know anything, stop asking and find it out and tell us. Otherwise....keep it to yourself.
 
gnasher729 said:
We know that you hate Apple, but as usual you get it wrong. Apple never claimed that Nokia's patents were not valid and that Apple should not pay. What Apple claimed that Nokia's patents were part of phone standards and Nokia had to license them to everyone on the same terms, whereas Nokia tried to charge Apple more money than others.

Now we hear that Apple is licensing the patents and pays some amount of money for them, something which Apple always said it wanted to do anyway.




No, the company that has Nokia by the balls is Microsoft. Important rule for any company: Never, ever hire an ex-Microsoft executive as your CEO.
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If my recollection is correct, Nokia had previously licensed based on a percentage of the value of each unit. That probably made sense in simple phones, but in smartphones, Apple would have been paying a much higher unit price for the identical technolgy, as would any smartphone maker.

This is where the fair and reasonable pricing was disputed by Apple.
Of course Apple should have and did contest this.

It now appears that there was an agreement made that was more favorable to Apple than Nokia original offering, while at the same time, establishing a benchmark that other smartphone makers would have to license against.

Nokia wins as the company establishes a benchmark for licensing to smartphone manufacturers, Apple wins as the licensing costs are more favorably than what Nokia had previously brought to the table, and Android's low cost business model takes another hit with added costs to the manufacturer.

The impact of MS patents on as yet unlicensed smartphone manufacturers and Oracle Java patents on the Android OS are unknown, but overall, I would say that collectively, these could have added impact on Android handset manufacturers, favorable to Nokia, MS, Apple and probably WebOS as well.
 
At any rate, this very positive for Nokia. They can now concentrate or focus on their strategies. Honestly, I like Nokia to survive this and once again to be one of the top mobile companies......
 
oh god, this thread is full of fanboys. Nobody won, Nokia didn't win, Apple didn't win. This is business. Nokia was going to be paid no matter what, they were. Apple was going to pay, they did. Everyone calm down. This is how business is done every single day.

And to people saying Nokia will fail: Aren't you tired of repeating the same old thing for the last 10 years? Nokia is not going anywhere, they been here the longest and they will remain here when others are gone. And do you kids even understand economics? At all? Remember, more choices we have, better off we are in this world. You will learn this in college.
 
lilo777 said:
OK, so Apple therefore admitted that they were wrong. Now lets hear from LTDs of this forum how they are going to spin this. They have been claiming all along that Apple was the "innovator" here and Nokia was in the wrong.
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Let's get some facts right -- in layman's terms, OK?

Apple was liable to pay the standard licence fee for using stuff that Nokia had contributed to the world-wide standards for mobile communications. Apple never disputed the licence fee. Nokia fell asleep at the wheel thinking the iPhone would sink, but when Apple started taking market share from Nokia, Nokia decided it wanted higher licence fees from Apple than other phone manufacturers.

Apple got pissed off and said SOSUMI (if you use a Mac, look in the Sound PrefPane under the Sound Effects tab and then google it for its origins).

Then both companies started having a go at each other -- this was probably settled by Bill Gates making a call to Nokia and telling them to stop being childish and concentrate on producing the new MS phone.
 
Popeye206 said:
Funny... I don't view this as Nokia won or Apple won. I view it as business.

I'm guessing Apple went to Nokia for the license and Nokia wanted too much and negotiations went nowhere. So Apple decided to take the next step which is use legal negotiations to get the price down to where they wanted it to be and this is what this is all about. I've seen this tactic before and generally works.

So this is not about Apple trying to steal technology, or not pay for it. It's not about who won, it's about two companies trying to watch out for their bottom line and leveraging their strengths to get what they need. It's just a process in business. That's all.
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How can you say Nokia didn't win on this. Nokia is going to get rightfully paid for the technology they developed that Apple was trying to use for free.
 
SiPat said:
Apple never disputed the licence fee. Nokia fell asleep at the wheel thinking the iPhone would sink, but when Apple started taking market share from Nokia, Nokia decided it wanted higher licence fees from Apple than other phone manufacturers.

Apple got pissed off and said SOSUMI (if you use a Mac, look in the Sound PrefPane under the Sound Effects tab and then google it for its origins).

Then both companies started having a go at each other -- this was probably settled by Bill Gates making a call to Nokia and telling them to stop being childish and concentrate on producing the new MS phone.
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Those are facts?
 
/s/FOSS Patents/Anti-FOSS Patent Troll/g and I am good with the article. That retard has to bring anti-Android anti-FOSS overstretched "points" to the discussion.
 
cmaier said:
But they didn't. One thing seems clear - Nokia gets no access to apple's IP, which seems to be what apple was worried about.
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That's the nub of it originally though wasn't it.

Nokia said they offered FRAND based on the same percentage that everyone else pays or some combo of payments + cross licencing. Apple disagreed that smartphones should be the same percentage as dumbphones and didn't want to cross licence.

And we're not going to get any closer to solving this unless details of the deal leak out.

SiPat said:
when Apple started taking market share from Nokia, Nokia decided it wanted higher licence fees from Apple than other phone manufacturers.
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That's pure speculation not fact since neither Apple nor Nokia nor any of the other manufacturers have let on what the licence fees actually are.
 
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Popeye206 said:
I don't view this as Nokia won or Apple won. I view it as business....
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I agree, Apple eventually had to settle, and Nokia who'd lost 25% in market capitalization since MAY 30, has lost drastic marketshare to companies like Samsung.

Elop (Nokia's new CEO) had to settle this and move the company forward or join Kodak.
 
twilson said:
Exactly, I'd don't think Nokia could have been given more than others had agreed to, because of the legal implications for a standards patent.

Let's not forget, Apple WANTED TO PAY THE SAME AS EVERYONE ELSE, all along. Nokia were just trying to be greedy!
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Not true....

The GSM patent pool, works in that you pay less for other licenses if you contribute more IP to the pool.

as Apple were unwilling to contribute any IP to the pool they were told to pay top whack for the licenses.

so, yes technically more than anyone else..but for a good reason.

No chance Nokia has caved on the amounts as if so then all the other contributors would want their extra slice too!
 
lilo777 said:
No, it's the company that invented your iPhone (for the most part).
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Uh, no. They invented some GSM technology. I think everyone would agree that the iPod Touch is basically an iPhone without a cellular chip in it right? Everyone would also agree that the Verizon iPhone is also an iPhone but without GSM technology right?

Ok, now if I turn it on its side then the iPhone is basically an iPod touch with a cellular chip in it. What other parts of the iPhone besides the cellular chip in the GSM iPhones and the cellular software stack that communicates with it are legitimately covered by Nokia patents? In my estimation, 95% of the GSM iPhone was not based on inventions originated at Nokia.

@archipellago: But what you are missing is that the patent pool was originally meant only for patents related to GSM cellular networking but Nokia wanted Apple to contribute multi-touch patents to the pool which are not cellphone specific are are used in Apple's non-phone products.
 
celo48 said:
I used to own ALL Nokia phones all my life until Apple came in the picture. Not to mention I may be living in US but I have seen from Addis Ababa to Dubai, from Paris to Prague. I would not talk about knowing things out of US if I were you.
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To be frank the nonsense that you are posting in this thread devalues any credability you have to the level of the following:

07-minister.jpg
 
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