Every time I hear about these patent cases I cannot help but shake my head at how far the patent system has come from its purpose. The latest example was spotted by CIO.com where Nokia is petitioning a California court to enforce the terms of an arbitration award completed in Stockholm, Sweden. According to Nokia, RIM "is not entitled to manufacture or sell products compatible with the WLAN standard without first agreeing with Nokia on the royalty to be paid for its manufacture and/or sale of subscriber terminals compatible with such standards." In other words Nokia claims that RIM agreed to not sell any of their current phones or tablets.
This whole disagreement stems from a deal RIM made with Nokia in 2003 licensing Nokia’s patents related to wireless devices. Nokia then performed a crafty move together with Sony creating a new company, MobileMedia Ideas LLC to manage certain patents from both companies. This MMI company then proceeded to sue RIM with Nokias patents. In the arbitration RIM argued that these patents were covered in previous agreement though the arbitration tribunal did not find in their favor.
CIO.com was kind enough to list the US patents that Nokia/MMI is suing over:
- 5,479,476, which covers user-adjustable modes for phones
- 5,845,219, which covers call alert during silent mode
- 6,049,796, which covers real-time search on a personal digital assistant
- 6,055,439, which covers a cellphone user interface
- 6,253,075, which covers call rejection
- 6,427,078, which covers a small, handheld workstation.
All of those seem like wireless patents to me still it blows my mind what companies can get patents for. We will let you know how this one plays out.
DigitalHomeBoy ( View Profile) - Posts: 51
Posted: November 27, 2012 at 11:49 PM EST from my BlackBerry 9900 | OS 7.1.0.746
I can’t even begin to say how this utter BS upsets me just by its rubbishness. How is it RIM has been in operation this long and Nokia is now pulling out the friggin’ boatload of sh*t on these patents?
Amir Saad ( View Profile) - Posts: 516
Posted: November 28, 2012 at 12:11 AM EST
I guess the CEO of Nokia is married to the attorney general’s daughter and business has been kinda slow…yada yada yada
Ronen Halevy ( View Profile) - Posts: 3331
Posted: November 28, 2012 at 8:35 AM EST
Yeah I am not sure how this stuff flies. It all seems so petty. I guess they see how badly their Windows phone strategy is working out
Amir Saad ( View Profile) - Posts: 516
Posted: December 1, 2012 at 11:35 PM EST
What’s more ugly is, Nokia won and they may/will file an injunction against RIM in the US banning phone sales now…oh boy.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/11/28/nokia-rim-idUSL5E8MS2AW20121128
Mr. Mo ( View Profile) - Posts: 63
Posted: November 28, 2012 at 10:34 AM EST
While I agree that this sounds like complete BS and the timing is impeccable, there just might a silver lining to this play by Nokia. I’m sure they have they’re ear to the ground listening intently to the rumblings of the carriers about BB10. I suspect that they’re hearing that BB10 really is and will be the phone consumers prefer.
Joe257 ( View Profile) - Posts: 628
Posted: November 28, 2012 at 11:27 AM EST
Nokia and Microsoft are running scared! They know that the #3 spot is out of reach.
kiddo2050 ( View Profile) - Posts: 813
Posted: November 28, 2012 at 5:03 PM EST
Nokia must be hurting.