US judge puts freeze on Apple-Nokia patent kerfuffle
Let the feds sort it
A US federal judge has sent Apple and Nokia lawyers to their respective corners until the feds get their chance to sort through the competing patent infringement claims.
US District Court in Delaware signed an order staying litigation, pending decisions by the US International Trade Commission on the matter.
Nokia sued Apple in the court in October 2009 over the alleged violation of ten patents used for the iPhone. The handset maker inferred it had approached Cupertino with licensing terms but was turned out.
"By refusing to agree appropriate terms for Nokia's intellectual property, Apple is attempting to get a free ride on the back of Nokia's innovation," the company's IP veep Ilkka Rahnasto stated back in 2009.
Apple responded in turn with a countersuit alleging that Nokia is infringing 13 of Apple's patents. Not to be outdone in patent numbers, Nokia added seven additional patents to its legal claims.
By early 2010, the USITC announced it had begun investigations on both Apple and Nokia based on complaints filed against one another.
Each company has denied infringement on their own part, and each accuses the other of wasting the court's time.
Apple is also suing Nexus One manufacturer HTC over alleged infringement of 20 patents, including UI and hardware as well as architectural design of handsets. ®
COMMENTS
Unfortunately...
it will take more cases like this to prove to the world that software patents are an impediment to progress rather than a driver of progress.
"Each company has denied infringement on their own part"
And they're probably both right in that neither company has benefited from the work of the other, which is why software patents don't work. They don't spread knowledge as intended, and they encourage resources to be spent on litigation rather than R&D.
We all know...
...what happened to the last person to fight on too many fronts at once, he lost WW2.
Not that Im making any comparison between Jobs and Hitler.
Re: Not software
"And, if you have a "real invention" that you implement in software, how does that make it any less of an invention?"
Software is algorithms is mathematics. Sure, people can think of clever algorithms, but this never happens in a vacuum: there's always something being built upon, and there are always people combining existing knowledge to come up with new stuff; letting someone frost/ice over the top of their "invention" and forbid anyone to move the state of the art forward isn't what mathematics or science is all about, despite attempts to "monetize" everything academic by people already dipping into the public purse.
And why should anyone demand a blanket monopoly on any field inside software, punishing anyone who happens to have had the same or similar insights? Some of the most significant patented algorithms have been discovered independently. How fair/just is it exactly to be told that someone you've never heard of doing something you didn't hear about now "owns" a particular area and that you now have to pay them to use your own work?
(And as for the actual case, maybe the commenter was confusing this case with the HTC one which definitely involves software and user interface patents.)
It's a fact...
that the ONLY winners in patent scraps are lawyers.
Dick the Butcher was right....
Is their anyone who still believes
that our present patent systems promote and reward innovation ? What a farce - but alas, it's we consumers who, as ever, are paying the bill !...
Henri
