Oxymoron of the day: User Friendly
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Apple Nokia war heats up
THE HANDBAGS AT DAWN duel between fruit-themed toymaker Apple and mobile phones leader Nokia is escalating.
Last week Nokia asked the US International Trade Commission (ITC) to ban the import of Apple's shiny Iphones because, it alleged, Jobs Mob stole all of its ideas for the technology.
Now the Cappuccino company has filed with the ITC demanding that Nokia be barred from importing all of its mobile phones because everyone knows that Steve Jobs invented everything so Nokia must have copied his brilliant ideas.
In short Nokia wants the ITC to ban imports of Apple's Iphones, IPods and MacBooks and the fruity outfit wants the ITC to ban imports of Nokia's smartphones in retaliation.
A spokesperson for Nokia said that the company is studying Apple's claims and will defend itself, but that does not change Nokia's own claims against Apple. Nokia thinks that Apple has had a free ride on Nokia's innovation since it shipped the first Iphone in 2007.
The ITC has so far not agreed to investigate either firm's complaint, although in such cases it often does pursue enquiries.
What the mobile phone industry is waiting for is for Apple and Nokia to come up with an agreement to cross-license each others technology, stop arguing and just get on with it. µ
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Nick, shouldn't it be at least the "duel between fruit-themed toymaker Apple and ex-gumboots maker Nokia"?
So basically what you are saying is that, if a company spends billions of dollars in developing new technologies, another company can just come and take advantage of it without paying anything?
Besides, AFAIK, this also involves patents which are outside F/RAND. Apple is shooting blanks with its counter-attacks. There aren't any similar issues with other mobile phone manufacturers, because they know how these things work. Apple just wants a free ride.
"Nokia's patents are parts of IEEE standards, and as such are required to be licensed under Free or Reasonable And Non Discriminatory (F/RAND) terms."
Yeah, Nokia loves this kind of thing: push a bunch of patents into publicly-mandated standards and not only does the goose lay golden eggs, it shits out golden turds, too.
If it's gear that has to operate on public infrastructure, which the phone and data networks pretty much are, there shouldn't be a bunch of corporate King Johns demanding their own taxes on top of the ones which funded the infrastructure work in the first place.
As if banning Nokia imports to the USA would make a significant different to the level of business Nokia does in that country... although the N900 is a very nice device and is far more capable (and open) than anything produced by Apple.
as per usual, but the actual details are interesting. Nokia's patents are parts of IEEE standards, and as such are required to be licensed under Free or Reasonable And Non Discriminatory (F/RAND) terms. This means than anyone should be able to license them at standard rates.
Apple is saying that Nokia was demanding that Apple pay royalties AND grant rights to Apples own patents (which are NOT covered by F/RAND) which Nokia was infringing in it's own products. This, Apple claims, is a breach of the IEEE F/RAND rules.