And so the suing continues. Apple and Nokia aren’t particularly friendly towards one another as of late, with both companies accusing each other of infringing upon one another’s patents. Several shots have been fired back and forth already, with the latest one coming straight from Espoo.
Basically, Nokia has slapped Apple with yet another patent infringement suit in the Federal District Court in the Western District of Wisconsin (one of those states I always forget when I play the states game), adding five new patents to the mix.
“The patents in question relate to technologies for enhanced speech and data transmission, using positioning data in applications and innovations in antenna configurations that improve performance and save space, allowing smaller and more compact devices,” Nokia claims, “These patented innovations are important to Nokia’s success as they allow improved product performance and design.”
“Nokia has been the leading developer of many key technologies in mobile devices,” said Paul Melin, General Manager of Patent Licensing at Nokia, “We have taken this step to protect the results of our pioneering development and to put an end to continued unlawful use of Nokia’s innovation.”
You know what’s really funny about these kinds of press releases? You can replace each instance of “Nokia” with “Apple” and they’d make just as much sense. This illustrates that most likely, both companies infringe on each other’s patents like crazy – now it’s just up to who will blink first.
In any case, I’m going to keep this story bookmarked, and see if I can indeed replace all instances of “Nokia” with “Apple” when Cupertino’s next press release arrives.
As Nelson from “The Simpsons” would say (poining towards Apple):
HA-HA!!
Ordinarily I would be annoyed with Nokia, or any other patent litigator.
But Apple has been truly obnoxious of late, and they deserve every patent lawsuit they get.
Plus, Nokia ordinarily does not litigate. They establish regular licensing on their IP, which most of the mobile industry has complied, with little or no fuss. And for Nokia, I don’t mind so much, because they have literally invested billions in R&D, and were original implementers of a lot of cellular/wireless/mobile technology.
With Apple and their ultra aggressive, draconian, locked-in walled garden, litigating selves, I do mind, because they go way too far, and most of their stuff was simply other peoples original stuff, but repackaged and slickly marketed.
This is the same Nokia who are, or at least were, in favour of software patents. Apple coming at them with software patents sounds like a little bit of karma to me.
Nokia has at least shown it can work openly with a developer community based on Symbian source release and Maemo Linux (now Meego). I can’t support there desire for software patents but I gotta give them credit for being as open as they have been (and, the N900 is some seriously sexy hardware allow such open development on).
I may not agree with much Microsoft does but they also are due credit for things like promoting patent reform and the Courier hardware (RIP) until it was canceled.
Apple, well, they’ve kept CUPS open and I have to give them credit for the other OSS projects they’ve taken over and kept open. But, of the three, I’d have to say it’s my least preferred company. Good hardware but the company policies are abysmal towards end users more often than not.
Still, credit where due for each company. In the end, they are all amoral non-human legal entities who would eat there own young if it improved the bottom line.
Don’t forget Qt. It has more to offer to desktop Linux (and thus OSS community in general) than all the other company-owned open source projects combined, provided that the non-kde parts of the community wake up and start to notice what they have at their disposal…
Edited 2010-05-07 18:26 UTC
I’ve been watching the Maemo app listings grow now with more than a few “killer apps” for my needs. Soon as the hardware falls into my budget range, this here N810 is getting upgraded. The question that this all causes though is how fast or if these apps will be ported over to Meego in or under the QT layer.
On the up side, QT means native support for KeepassX rather than it being a foreign QT app as it is on the older Maemo versions.
So you are concerned about Gtk/Hildon apps? Qt apps should be directly transferable with little changes.
i bet you won’t be missing your apps for long; MeeGo will be a much bigger entity than Maemo ever was (with non-phone devices available), so incentive (fame and €€€) to port apps over is larger.
I figured the popular apps would be ported over pretty quickly. That shnazy looking graphic wifi scanner was the first thing that really hooked me for the N900. I’d like to see much of the older software libraries ported over. I’m not sure how the N900’s native media player is but Canola is a fantastic bit of kit for me.
Outside of the standard repositories, I’m also thinking of Ruby, Metasploit, Scappy and such. Aircrack is a fantastic scanner as is Kismet even if your not following through with the cracking audit step. I use GPE on device and desktop and SSH to move GPE data and other content back and forth. If the new distro has a solid PIM that syncs to my *nix boxes then I’m willing to make that change.
But I still gotta vent about my one big WTF; RPM. Why on earth did they take Limo’s RPM packaging rather than sticking with DEB and the rich and solid package management it provides. Having a fork of my preferred distro on my PDA was also a big bonus. Even if one is only going to use the GUI manager, apt in the back end (or preferably aptitude) is all kinds of powerful. That simple package manager choice was almost enough to have me buying an Android.
There is some movement in that direction.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qt_%28framework%29#Application…
Most of those applications are not tied to KDE.
I guess that’s why all their customers are flocking away from them and their sales are crashing.
Since when was managing to sell things == good company policies ? Just have a look at Windows XP sales…
Edited 2010-05-07 23:29 UTC
Apple has the highest customer satisfaction rating of any hardware manufacturer, also the best rated retail experience, it’s the most admired consumer electronics and computer hardware company, etc.
I don’t know who these users are that Apple is upsetting but clearly there aren’t too many of them.
( I actually had an Apple experience just this week I’d like to share. I got my iPad 3G. It had an issue with the screen so I took it to the Apple store. Sadly, they didn’t have one to replace mine so they put another order in for me, free rush delivery. Also, as an apology, they gave me a $100 gift card. )
]{
Agreed. Apple are actually very good to their customers. At least I can call Apple and am guaranteed to actually get someone who has a clue, unlike HP or Dell that outsource their technical support to some third party whose employees know absolutely nothing. It’s developers, particularly iPhone OS developers, that they treat like shit. Mac devs have it good though at least for now, since Apple isn’t holding the hand of the almighty attitude over them.
I just find the notion that Apple’s company policies in any sense creates a generally bad experience for their customers ridiculous. People are buying their products as fast as they can make them because of the opposite – Apple’s company policies are creating end users experiences that the vast majority of consumers don’t just like but positively love.
There may be people who intensely dislike Apple’s policies, corporate behaviour and/or their products but to claim that Apple is somehow shitting on its customers is just plain daft. One could only evidence such a claim by referencing the subjective experience of the consumers of Apple products and all the evidence points to the customers loving Apple and it products. That evidence consists not just of the raw sales figures but also the way that Apple consistently does very well in almost any survey of customer satisfaction in any market segment in which it competes.
Windows XP may have been a less than great product but it satisfied MS’s customers (corporate box buyers and seekers of relatively cheap but powerful PCs that would run reasonably well) and so one could not have claimed that MS’s policies towards its end users were abysmal.
By all means criticise Apple and products but not by making spurious, unfounded and inane claims.
That’s because you think in the short term. A lot of us see the danger in companies having control over the content on “our” devices, and that danger is just as valid for me as it is for Apple buyers – whether hey realise that or not.
It’s not all about user-friendliness. There’s more to a product than that.
So what you are saying is Apple’s customers current experience is good – hence the popularity of the products – but will become bad in the future.
Frankly I see all this froth and paranoia about the notional dangers of Apple’s excessive control as a lot of hot air. Nothing bad has happened so far as a result of of Apple’s approach to their products or things like the app store and I see no evidence that anything bad will happen.
I think that Apple’s approach increases the freedom and empowerment of consumers, the freedom from buying apps that crash your phone, the freedom that comes from the safety that consumers feel about loading stuff from the app store on their iPhones and iPads. I think most consumers of apps from the Apple store feel more free not less free, more safe not less safe, that they have more choice not less. That’s why Apple is winning.
You have it entirely backwards.
Cydia offers applications that Apple would not approve. By disallowing these applications, Apple restricts choice to the content it believes acceptable – and any way you slice it, either government or corporate control of your device and especially its content is bad. Without Apple’s fickle control, the device would have access to more applications, more information, more functionality.
And don’t play the “think-of-the-children!” card. One of the greater men who ever lived already said it best (paraphrased): he who sacrifices freedom for security deserves neither.
Edited 2010-05-08 19:38 UTC
Apples approach might be considered problematic if Apple controlled 90% plus of any market, market segment or product category – but it doesn’t and if someone wants something not sold via the app store the answer is simple – buy an Android/Chrome based device.
Its no good countering by saying that Apple controls 100% of iPhone apps – “ah there is the monopoly and lack of choice”. Thats as tautological as saying that Ford controls 100% of Ford cars and you can only buy models that Ford decides to make.
The point is that if this supposed and much hyped (in places like this forum) Apple excessive control resulted in a degraded user experience or fewer customer benefits from Apple goods then the consumer could and would just shop elsewhere – but they don’t because in actuality it causes Apple customers no problems and brings lots of benefits. This is the model that Apple have decided on for their products and their business, if customers don’t like it then they can choose an alternative. They don’t. So just get over it.
I can access the full userland of my mobile device without breaking criminal law. Extending my mobile device beyond the limited imagination of the vendor is actually encouraged by the vendor. If Apple has it’s way, the Iphone and similar devices will not be made a DMCA exception which means accessing one’s own legally purchased possession is criminal, not civil law or simple breach of service agreement but criminal federal law; for being able to use SSH and a command line on one’s phone. That is extremely consumer hostile. The overbearing lock-in to a single service chain is far more beneficial to the shareholders by raising such barriers against consumer choice. Apple’s track record for security responsiveness has been abismal given; silencing security researchers, claiming “not our problem, no bugs here”, delays in updating Apple’s own flavored Java, Safari secure like a screen door. They do well with the genious bar customer support and are brilliant with marketing. They do also deliver pretty products but look under the makeup at all of the company policies.
It would be interesting to see if Apple files a counter-suit. If they don’t, I can speculate that they already brought out all of their big guns in the last one.
As a Nokia shill I can’t comment on this widely (not that I have inside info or anything), but consider this thought game:
– Scenario 1:
Your boss comes to you and says you have to create a more efficient way to transfer data through radio waves. You have full technical library and laboratory at your disposal. How long do you think this will take and how much it will cost? Do you have to hire PhD grade researchers or can you cope alone?
– Scenario 2:
Your boss says the company bought an LCD panel technology that supports multi-touch. He says you should invent a way to zoom on it, using 1-3 fingers. How long will this take and how much will the research cost? Do you have to hire PhD grade researchers or can you cope alone?
That sort of thinking is sound, though there’s a limit to how obvious “innovation” in software may be. If your boss comes at you asking for a more efficient discrete fourier transform or elliptic curve algorithm, you’d need heavy math/technical background + PhD grade researcher to produce an improvement over the state of the art, and the algorithm could qualify as software innovation and as such, in my mind, should be patentable.
But setting the line would require the US patent office to not be stupid and that’s a lost cause.
I don’t want to sound like a douche or a troll, but can we get a legal-bs-less RSS feed? I’m bored to tears of this crap.
I’d like the ability to vote articles down as “Off Topic.”
It’s be handy if we could do something like this:
http://www.osnews.com?q=-apple,-patent,-H264
You can filter out something you are not wanting to see by using the not query string like this: http://www.osnews.com/?not=patent
say you don’t want to read anything about patent, antitrust, mpeg-la and h264, you can also filter out multiple words by using commas this: http://www.osnews.com/?not=patent,antitrust,mpeg-la,h264
http://www.osnews.com/?not=patent,antitrust,mpeg-la,h264,license,ph…
I don’t do RSS (confessing my ignorance). Don’t the readers have some way to filter what you don’t want?
Edited 2010-05-08 05:59 UTC
who will blink first
Seriously? Now who’s been in the mobile business longer? Yes, I know Apple has a few sticks to protect itself, but when it comes down to real mobile communication tech and solutions, they are so far down from Nokialand that they can be hardly seen.
These days I just have the feeling Apple doesn’t seem to find its place. Coming up with a few nice looking products doesn’t make them king of the hill. They suddenly seem to think they know better – better than anyone out there – in hardware, in software, in devices, in web technologies, in everything, and they certainly preach and act like that.
Nice wishful thinking, but stupid nonetheless.
Interesting comments here from Nokia and Intel.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/05/04/meego_linux_mobile_android_…
My take: If Intel and Nokia stand behind Meego against patent trolls, as they appear to be doing, this might force Google to do the same with Android.
Edited 2010-05-09 11:02 UTC