Zardon

We have been reporting on the ongoing legal battle between Nokia and Apple -which is based around the fact that Nokia are claiming Apple are breaching copyright patents in their iPhone. This case is due to last between 2 to 3 years so it certainly wont be resolved overnight.

Analysts believe that Apple will countersue Nokia for its own patents and allege separate infringement. This looks to be a messy legal battle and many predict it will actually end up in the hands of the U.S. International Trade Commission.

So what is this really all about? Well Nokia have alleged that Apple have violated ten patents which they own. They claim ownership of technology related to Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM), Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UTMS) and Wirless Local Area Network (WLAN). The Finnish based company have argued the point that they have invested more than 40 billion euros into the R&D for these technologies in the last 20 years which gives it a huge scope of patent ownership. The company have also entered into licensing agreements with about 40 other companies for these patents.

Nokia claim that all iPhone models infringe on these patents - well those released since 2007 anyway. Even security, encryption and speech coding are involved.

Expert Analyst Gene Munster has predicted that Nokia are wanting a 1%-2% share of every iPhone sold which translates to $6 or $12. This could mean a huge amount reaching almost $1 billion.

All Apple have publically stated so far is that they will vigorously defend itself against Nokia's complaint - this was filed in the annual form 10-K with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Looking deeper in this, it seems that both parties may very well want a settlement to take place because it is very unlikely than any company could create a mobile phone without using Nokia patented technology but on the other hand Nokia don't want to totally burn Apple either as their monetary income is so massive that even a small part of it would be massively beneficial to future R&D for the Finnish group.

Allan Campbell: Heaven Media.

SeraphicSorcerer

This is how apple plays the legalgame, they counter-sue, costing nokia to much, and then they both settle claims... Ah apple's legal team is the pwnz0r.

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MitchRapp

such BS though. Apple thinks they can steal anyone's tech for free?

WaltC

This is where I think Nokia is all wet. Notice the careful wording--"technology related to..."--not to be confused with the GSM, UTMS, and WLAN industry standards themselves. Basically, Nokia is saying that although it has no patents on them and claims no ownership of all of these industry standards, it nonetheless feels it is entitled to licensing fees from any and all cell-phone manufacturers who make devices *compatible* with these standards. I think it's ridiculous, personally. Given Nokia's present financial position it seems that Nokia is angling for a big pay-off settlement from Apple just to withdraw the suit.

I cannot imagine Apple being dumb enough to actually put the iPhone on sale knowing it is violating a bunch of Nokia patents in doing so. I would imagine that Apple researched all of these things diligently before introducing the iPhone.

What Nokia is saying is very much like I would imagine Dell would say if Dell launched a suit against Apple for employing "devices compatible with the x86 hardware standard." As if Dell actually owned "x86" in and of itself. I'd imagine that AMD and Intel would have a lot to say about that...

Basically, if Nokia doesn't own the above-mentioned industry standards, and can produce no patents proving it does, then how Nokia might sue Apple for violating *Nokia's patents* simply by making a device compatible with those standards beats me. If Nokia received such a favorable outcome on this issue then effectively Nokia would own the Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM), Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UTMS) and Wirless Local Area Network (WLAN) standards--and everyone who has ever made a device compatible with these standards would have to pay Nokia through the nose.