For more than a decade I've been a loyal user of your products, pretty
much every year or so I would upgrade my phone to your latest model.
Today that comes to an end.
My reason is that I think that companies should compete on quality and
price, not to use software patents as a means of stifling competition.
Software Patents were a mistake when they were granted to begin with,
to see the proud company that Nokia once was stoop to the use of the
dirtiest weapons in business is really sad.
I realize that my voice hardly counts in issues like this, but I figured
that by letting you know, you are aware that there is another price attached
to this lawsuit.
The ten patents in suit relate to technologies fundamental to making devices which are compatible with one or more of the GSM, UMTS (3G WCDMA) and wireless LAN standards. The patents cover wireless data, speech coding, security and encryption and are infringed by all Apple iPhone models shipped since the iPhone was introduced in 2007.
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So these are likely to be more hardware related. That doesn't make the claims any more valid, but I don't think that these will have many (any?) software claims.
Standards exist to ensure interoperability. In software you can't even copyright an interface, let alone that you should be able to get a patent on an element that is a standard of communications.
Well I'm all for seeing somebody beat Apple at their own patent game, but like somebody said in another comment, this is probably just going to result in a patent sharing agreement. As such I dont really see the need to get so worked up. Besides it would indeed be unfair to the other 40 or so companies which have signed with Nokia if Apple gets away with this.
Okay look at it this way: I spent 40B euros digging a well to get water in my extremely parched village. I would prefer to be able to make some of that back by charging others to draw water from my well. What is wrong with that???
This is not like Nokia went and patented something that was already existing in the market and is trolling. They poured their own money into it, so why would they let a competitor, esp. a very succesful competitor use their tech for free???
The patents listed all contain stuff that seems to be pretty obvious when it comes to mobile communications.
Yes, you need encryption, thousands of manyears of work not done at Nokia preceded that. Yes, you will need GSM, which is unfortunately patent encumbered, but since there is no other option that makes any patents on that tech a simple matter of extortion.
WiFi ? How else will you connect to a lan from a mobile phone ?
Etc. If this is Nokias best shot at showing how they're going to 'compete' with Apple then they've just told us they don't think they can. What a total waste of a reputation.
I believe it is something to do with the core "GSM technologies and its evolution to UMTS / 3G WCDMA", an area where Nokia has indeed done a lot of original research.
I spent 40B euros figuring out how to and and digging a well to get water to my parched village. I add a bucket, but the water is still kind of muddy. I'm the only well, though, so I do well enough.
Then someone comes along and digs a well a couple hundred feet away, adds a pumping system (so they can sell more water) and a filtration system (so the water is cleaner). Nobody wants my water anymore. So I'm about to go broke.
So of course, instead of making a better pumping and filtration system, I sue the guy making the better well. At least, that's Nokia's position.
In the above post, the well represents the patented technology. He creates the technology (digs the well) and patents it (seeks to profit from it by monopolizing it's use).
In your analogy, you seem to be skipping the issue of patents entirely. Note that Apple did not go out and "dig it's own well" by developing something completely unrelated to GSM, UTMS, Wi-Fi, etc. Whether Nokia's claim turns out to be valid aside, it's undeniable that Apple is using the technology that Nokia is making the claim on. That is to say, they aren't suing over Apple developing "the better well", they're suing Apple for using their well without compensation.
Yes. I think that software patents are a severe problem and I vote with my feet when it comes to this kind of issue.
I'm sure my one-man-boycott isn't going to impress anybody but that's the sweep your own street argument working for you.
It's a variation on the 'if one percent fallacy', 'if everybody does it then it will make a difference'. And I'm sure that not everybody - or even a small percentage - will do this, after all the only time when it will make Nokia recant is if the loss in sales outweighs their potential gain in this suit.
But that doesn't matter to me. Point of principle. You do software patents, I might buy your stuff. You sue using software patents (and there seems to be some confusion about that, the non-software issues are dead obvious, the software issues should never have been granted or should have become common property the second Nokia started pushing for those things to be accepted as standards).
Nokia was one of the parties pushing hardest to allow software patents in the EU:
Have you seen some facts that this would be about software patents? I would guess it is a mixture of hardware and software, from the press release:
"The ten patents in suit relate to technologies fundamental to making devices which are compatible with one or more of the GSM, UMTS (3G WCDMA) and wireless LAN standards. The patents cover wireless data, speech coding, security and encryption..."
And do you really think that 40 BILLION (not million) is required to implement GSM, UMTS and wireless lan ?
Did some Standard-Bearing Moses come down from the mountain carrying three stone tablets on which the fully-formed GSM, UMTS and WLAN specifications were inscribed?
Of course not. These standards were derived from inventions by Nokia, Ericsson, Qualcomm and many others; inventions that indeed did cost billions to develop.
Sure, inventing stuff costs money, but handset manufacturers all benefit from those inventions by being able to charge for them.
As for the history of GSM:
"In 1982, the European Conference of Postal and Telecommunications Administrations (CEPT) created the Groupe Spécial Mobile (GSM) to develop a standard for a mobile telephone system that could be used across Europe.[6] In 1987, a memorandum of understanding was signed by 13 countries to develop a common cellular telephone system across Europe.[7][8] Finally the system created by SINTEF lead by Torleiv Maseng was selected.[9]"
The rest of that stuff: communications methods and associated bits & pieces should simply not be patentable, especially not if they consist of pieces of software.
By your reasoning every TCP protocol stack component should have been patented because it cost 'billions to develop'.
What constitutes abuse? Is simply applying for and being granted a patent for something you've developed inherently abusive, or have they actually wielded their patents in an anti-competitive way? You'll note that they haven't sued Palm or Google over multi-touch gestures, in spite of a huge amount of press claiming they could and would.
Dear Nokia,
For more than a decade I've been a loyal user of your products, pretty much every year or so I would upgrade my phone to your latest model.
Today that comes to an end.
My reason is that I think that companies should compete on quality and price, not to use software patents as a means of stifling competition.
Software Patents were a mistake when they were granted to begin with, to see the proud company that Nokia once was stoop to the use of the dirtiest weapons in business is really sad.
I realize that my voice hardly counts in issues like this, but I figured that by letting you know, you are aware that there is another price attached to this lawsuit.
best regards,