Nokia takes hit in High Court priority-calls patent battle The UK High Court ruling on Nokia's infringement of patents held by IPCom has both sides declaring victory, which is jolly friendly but not entirely accurate. The latest chapter in the ongoing dispute, which goes back to 2007, falls largely in IPCom's favour in dismissing Nokia's various attempts to have the patent invalidated …
So, you can now file a patent that is very broad, so broad as to be found to be invalid. Then at a later date amend that patent to specifically cover devices that have been on sale for a considerable amount of time. And it is now a valid patent which you can use to sue the makers of the 'infringing' devices?
Logic error - please reinstall legal system!
What bothers me is that companies are allowed to submit patents for using the functionality of a standard in a way which that standard is meant to be used. See the many XML patents (mainly in the US), this one in the story - the GSM specs have included prioritisation of calls since day 1 - and so on. It's neither novel nor inventive.
> It's neither novel nor inventive
For the last 15+ years the patent system purpose is to not to spur innovation or protect inventors/IP but simply to provide billable hours for scum sucking lawyers. Funny how that works when most of those who make the laws practice/have practice law. The ultimate leech vested interest in society that tax every other profession.
Hmm, the ruling goes into a lot of detail and it seems the judge has achieved a good understanding of the issues involved. I'm a little unclear on why Nokia didn't try to invalidate the patent on mathematical grounds, as I'm sure that the patent can be expressed entirely as a mathematical formula.
There is perhaps one other issue though - i would suspect that the base-station itself determines whether network availability is by ballot or by group, and therefore an individual phone cannot be held to infringe the patent, only the base station itself; the phone only responds to the information from the base station.
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