Nokia vs. Apple: the in-depth analysis

Oct 29th 2009
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There’s just something about Apple that makes people go crazy whenever the company’s lawyers do even the simplest things — whether it’s filing routine trademark oppositions, getting patents granted, or, uh, defending allegations that the company is in league with the Mafia, Steve and friends just seem to inspire some strong reactions whenever they end up in the courtroom. So of course things got a little wild last Thursday when Nokia announced it was suing Apple over ten patents related to GSM, UMTS (what you know as 3G) and WiFi — the pundit class immediately set upon the idea that the lawsuit was some sort of reaction to Nokia’s diminishing cellphone marketshare and the perceived dominance of the iPhone, perhaps best exemplified by John Gruber’s flippant “If you can’t beat ‘em, sue ‘em.” Nokia can’t compete against Apple, so obviously it’s abusing the hopelessly-broken patent system get a little payback, Espoo-style — right?

Well, wrong. As usual, the race to hype this dispute as a bitter standoff between two tech giants desperate to destroy one another has all but ignored the reality of how patents — especially wireless patents — are licensed, what Nokia’s actually asking for, and how it might go about getting it. And as you know, we just don’t do things that way, so we’ve asked our old friend Mathew Gavronski, a patent attorney in the Chicago office of Michael Best & Friedrich, to help us sort things out and figure out what’s really going on here — read on for more.

Continue reading Nokia vs. Apple: the in-depth analysis

Filed under: Cellphones