Nokia and Apple Settle Dispute

[pjw918]

Nokia and Apple Settle Patent Dispute, Sign New Deal
iPhone in Canada, May 23

Nokia and Apple have settled long-running intellectual property disputes and agreed to a multi-year patent license, moving from courtroom foes to business partners.

The companies also said that Apple will resume selling Nokia’s digital health products – which include Withings-branded connected objects – in Apple retail and online stores. Nokia has said it is devoting considerable investment in that product line.

Nokia had filed lawsuits with regional courts in Dusseldorf, Mannheim and Munich in Germany and the US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, claiming 32 patent infringements on technology including displays, display, user interface, software, antenna, chipsets, and video coding.

Apple will pay Nokia an undisclosed sum and further revenues while the deal stands. Analysts at UBS estimate that Nokia will receive between €450m and €550m (£390m-£475m) from Apple.

“This is a meaningful agreement between Nokia and Apple,” said Maria Varsellona, Nokia’s chief legal officer. “It moves our relationship with Apple from being adversaries in court to business partners working for the benefit of our customers.”

Apple chief operating officer Jeff Williams said: “We are pleased with this resolution of our dispute and we look forward to expanding our business relationship with Nokia.”

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Apple, Nokia end patent dispute and then quickly sign a new deal for deeper hardware partnership
Reuters, May 23

[indene]

Most tech companies "pool" patents in order to promote open standards, and save a little on R&D themselves. Pooling benefits the industry as a whole, while the contributing companies profit from licensing their own patents to other manufacturers in what are supposed to be "fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory terms.” This case started back in 2009 after Apple felt that Nokia, who had already committed the 10 patents in question to the pool, were discriminating their licensing terms against Apple.
The patents are GSM, UMTS standard as well as 802.11 WiFi technologies related, so copying... No.