Apple countersues Nokia

Published by Rafe Blandford at 17:04 UTC, December 11th 2009

In October Nokia announced it was suing Apple over patent infringements with regards to the iPhone and GSM, UTMS and WLAN technologies. Today Apple announced that it had filed a counter-suit against Nokia. In the counter-suit, which has been filed in US District Court of Delaware, Apples denies all claims of infringement against it and further alleges that Nokia 'chose to copy the iPhone' and as a result has infringed on 13 of Apple's own patents. Such counter suits are common in patent disputes where each side tries to establish as strong as negotiating position as possible.

There are two separate issues here. Firstly Apple denies that it is infringing any of Nokia's patents and denies that any of them are essential. It notes that if the court does construe the patents as essential then Nokia has failed to license those patents on a FRAND (fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory) basis. Nokia has offered licensing terms to Apple, but Apple feel that they are unreasonable (i.e. do not fall into the FRAND criteria).

Secondly Apple has alleged that Nokia has infringed some of Apple's own patent in creating some of its recent devices. The Nokia 5310, E71, Nokia N900 and carbide.c++ (Nokia's developer tool) products are mentioned by name, but some of the infringements could, allegedly, apply to all USB devices, or all Symbian, S60 and Series 40 devices.

Patents claims are complex legal areas and this dispute is likely to continue for some time. Counter-suits are common in patent disputes as they can be employed as negotiating tactics. In all likelihood this will still be settled out of court. With Nokia's original filing the general consensus amongst analysts, legal and other commentators (e.g. see Engadget's breakdown here) was that Apple did have a case to answer. It is worth noting that Apple's alleged infringements of Nokia patents are in fields that are deemed as essential to industry standards, somewhat in contrast with Nokia's alleged infringements of Apple's patents.

In a press release about the filing Apple used some concise but dramatic language:

"Other companies must compete with us by inventing their own technologies, not just by stealing ours,” said Bruce Sewell, Apple’s General Counsel and senior vice president."

Apple uses similar language in the filing itself:

"In 2007, Apple introduced the iPhone a ground-breaking device that allowed users access to the functionality of the already popular iPod on a revolutionary mobile phone and Internet device... The iPhone platform has caused a revolutionary change in the mobile phone category.

In contrast, Nokia made a different business decision and remained focused on traditional mobile wireless handsets with conventional user interfaces. As a result, Nokia has rapidly lost share in the market for high-end mobile phones...

In response, Nokia chose to copy the iPhone, especially its enormously popular and patented design and user interface."

Source: Digital Daily, Court filings

News Discussion

Quote:

Originally Posted by rafiii I am so glad that software pattents don't exist in Europe.

Actually, they do. You simply phrase a patent claim as a computer-implementation of a method; as long as the method itself is patentable (ie. novel and inventive), the software-implementation of the method is also patentable. The only thing you can't patent is the code itself....

Quote:

Originally Posted by Unregistered An increasing amount of articles on here have nothing to do with Symbian. Which is fine since Symbian is becoming marginalised, but maybe a relaunch with a new name isn't out of order?

Marginalised? Really?

Quote:

Originally Posted by buster Marginalised? Really?

Indeed. For 0.0001% of the phone purchasing market, mostly people who like to post on forums like this one, there is a fashionable anti-symbian feeling in their own little world. There little world where the number 1 seller is "marginalised" LOL!

Meanwhile out in the real world there is an entirely different view. I can tell you from the frontline that whilst people are impressed by the UI on some other phones, when it comes down to it they buy something that suits them for other reasons and the breadth of choice that Nokia offer with Symbian is holding them up well this christmas.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Unregistered An increasing amount of articles on here have nothing to do with Symbian.

Actually this bit of news has lot to do with Symbian. In Apple's papers to court Symbian is mentioned consistently as the platform which infringes on Apple's patents. S40 is mentioned only once and apparenty Maemo breaks just one Apple patent.

Quote:

Originally Posted by clonmult Nokia sues apple over a bunch of technologies fundamental to GSM based phones. So Apple sues Nokia back over what is a bunch of fluffy and quite possibly baseless software patents :

On that basis, Apple need to be suing all the phone companies.

Quote:

Originally Posted by buster Actually, they do. You simply phrase a patent claim as a computer-implementation of a method; as long as the method itself is patentable (ie. novel and inventive), the software-implementation of the method is also patentable. The only thing you can't patent is the code itself....

Quite right. The European Patent Office has approved tens of thousands of software patents, through this "loophole". For several years, the big industry players (such as Nokia and Microsoft) have also tried to lobby the EU to "officially" apporove "pure" software patents. The attempts have been thwarted a couple of times already. But might have been successfully sneaked in by now through some subitem in an agricultural ballot or some such.

Plenty of info on that topic on, e.g., http://www.groklaw.net/

Quote:

Originally Posted by N/A Quite right. The European Patent Office has approved tens of thousands of software patents, through this "loophole". For several years, the big industry players (such as Nokia and Microsoft) have also tried to lobby the EU to "officially" apporove "pure" software patents. The attempts have been thwarted a couple of times already. But might have been successfully sneaked in by now through some subitem in an agricultural ballot or some such. Plenty of info on that topic on, e.g., http://www.groklaw.net/

Funny you should mention the EPO, as that's where I work, as a patent examiner...

However, the EU has no (direct) control over how the EPO functions, as the EPO is a self-financing, self-governing organisation, with many more member countries than the EU. If the Community Patent ever gets off the ground, the EU may have more influence on how the EPO functions, as most of the work will be carried out by us...

Quote:

Originally Posted by Unregistered On that basis, Apple need to be suing all the phone companies.

Therein lies the problem - software patents are kinda difficult, and shouldn't be patents in their own right.

What Nokia patented wasn't software as such, but underlying technologies. Some of those apple patents appear to be based around the user interface and themes - which is something that has been proven before (between Apple and M$) to be unenforcable.

It'll definitely be an intersting show, and a damn good earner for their lawyers.

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