October 22nd, 2009
Apple thumbing nose at Nokia? Nokia sues them over wireless patents
You can’t argue with the success of the Apple iPhone, especially here in the US. However, Nokia believes that Apple infringes on their patents for GSM, UMTS, and WLAN standards so it is suing Apple in a Delaware court. There are ten patents called out in the suit that 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 details of the patents were not in the press release, but I have to wonder why the iPhone is different than all the other smartphones using these same wireless technologies and maybe it has to do with the way they all work together or something. According to the press release, approximately 40 other companies, including virtually all leading mobile device vendors, have worked our license agreements with Nokia.
Nokia has not had much success in the US and their market share here has declined siginificantly over the years, even counting their “dumb” phones. From Nokia’s point of view, I hope this lawsuit has some valid evidence because I don’t think this will cause people to love the Nokia name if iPhone’s are affected by the lawsuit. Then again, Nokia spent billions developing these technologies that all the other players have acknowledged is valuable so they should be compensated accordingly for the billions they spent.
It seems like Apple may have turned their nose to Nokia regarding these technologies that everyone else has already worked out with Nokia. Another sign of Apple arrogance?
Matthew Miller is an avid mobile device enthusiast who works during the day as a professional naval architect in Seattle. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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| 10/22/09
