Nokia Tells Reddit It Infringes Some Patents in Lead-Up to IPO
Nokia Tells Reddit It Infringes Some Patents in Lead-Up to IPO
Reddit Inc., the social media platform gearing up for an initial public offering this week, said Nokia Oyj has accused it of infringing some of their patents.
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Nokia is no stranger to patent fights. In February, the company reached a patent agreement with Chinese phone maker Vivo, ending a years-long dispute that dragged the two companies into court and forced Vivo to pull out of Germany. In 2021, Daimler and Nokia settled a dispute over the licensing of wireless technology patents in cars, ending a legal battle that had at one point threatened sales of the iconic Mercedes brand in its home country.
Is Nokia becoming some sort of patent troll?
Nokia actually is a big player in 5G networks, which is what the Vivo one was about. I'm not sure you can call them a patent troll for defending patents that they're actually using
Right, but all those cases involved companies that were doing legit things with wireless. This is Reddit, though. Where do their businesses intercept?
The only thing I can think of is maybe they have some patent on actual trolls. They are from a Nordic country, after all.
We don't know. No details on what the actual patents are.
Heh
There is a Nokia branch called Nokia Technologies. They invest money in R&D, they file for genuine patents involving new technology, for instance in audio and video compression. (They want to sue Netflix or already sued). Them defending themselves against patent abuse is how they earn money. And they go against other big corps. This is vastly different than your typical patent troll.
Or, y'know, Nokia Bell Labs.
Is the only difference that they aren't actively buying up and hoarding other patents not filed in house? Because what you described is SOP for patent trolls.
It boils down to how broadly they interpret infringements. Not whether they did the R&D themselves (I.E. not buying companies for their patents)
Be careful not to assign a “patent troll” label to everyone defending their patent portfolio. Where do you mark the line?
I'm a software engineer. Most things should not be patentable.
Look and feel? No. Basic architecture? No. Given the same set of problems, engineers are very likely to come up with similar solutions.
I once designed an extremely complicated framework for TV apps. My boss at one point was impressed because he sat in on a "lecture" I was giving to a new teammate describing the architecture and why the complexity was needed. My boss got eager and asked if it was something we could patent. I said no.
About a year later, a coworker sent me an article from Netflix describing an extremely similar solution to what I had devised, from around the same time.
Same problem, pursued completely independently, with very similar solutions.
I believe that anti theft laws are sufficient for protecting proprietary algorithms/protocols, which does need to be protected. But ideas shouldn't be patentable.
I.E., gestures to navigate? No. Bezzles on smart screens? No. Backwards engineering your 5G protocol to be used with unapproved devices? Should be protected, but I don't think patents should be the vehicle. Backwards engineering your own 5G protocol that's very similar? Ehhhh debatable
Mechanical Engineer - hard disagree. Spending four years of iteration and design to make a final product with no protection would be ridiculous.
All someone has to do to copy a part is buy it and start making it. Which means all the money and time spent making the new widget is wasted.
Look and feel and basic architecture are respectively not eligible for utility patent or likely to be found obvious/directed to ineligible subject matter.
You must have forgotten about all those lawsuits around patent infringement on smart phone / tablet form factors. Things as trivial as black bezels around smart phone screens.
I specified utility patents. The smartphone wars covered a huge gamut of different types of IP, including both utility and design patents. If something is purely ornamental in nature (and new), it can get a design patent. There's quite a bit more nuance to it than that, tbf, but I'm on my mobile trying to gtfo bed in the morning so don't really want to dive into a doctrinal lesson on patents.
Large corporations devote significant resources to developing patentable technologies strictly for IP creation rather than productization. Part of this is for aggressive licensing purposes, part is for participation in patent licensing pools with other major companies, and part is for defensive purposes wrt blowback analysis (i.e., someone considers enforcing their own IP, but the target has so much other IP that could be turned against them, the blowback risk outweighs the possible gain in a successful enforcement).
This is pretty different than a troll, which typically does not develop technology but rather goes out and snaps up assets on firesale from companies having solvency issues or pruning their portfolios. Moreover, trolls are not entering pools or worrying about blowback.... they produce nothing so they cannot infringe a target's IP.
"You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain"
Nokia has chosen both ways at once.