Nokia flogs 350 vital mobile phone patents Patent licensing outfit Sisvel has acquired 450 patents from Nokia, 350 of which are essential for mobile telephony, but despite appearances this is no desperate attempt to borrow cash from the future. The patents include 350 which are considered "essential", in that it is impossible to create mobile phones conforming to 2G, …
About 20 years ago, I worked for a small company, that was in (temporary) Deep Doo-do.
I suggested, (unwisely, the bosses were built like Brick Shi*t-houses, and had the charm and finesse of a horny gorilla), that, as they have 2 brand-new Jags outside, they use those to raise cash.
They went ballistic. I'd have had less problem insulting the Kray twins.
What they didn't realise was I meant "Sale-and-Leaseback" (They had less business knowlege than an ex-parrot). Raise cash on the car, rent and hire it back when things improve (as, indeed they did after a couple of months)*
Is this REALLY what Nokia is doing?
*I tried to dissuade them from 'factoring', which shows your customers that you're really in the sandpit.
This is what we all know as lawsuit by proxy. It's been very en vouge at Microsoft lately and somebody suggested Nokia to use this tactic.
If Nokia would try to monetize the patents it owns, they are certainly vulnerable to various counter-suits and they will come up as bad guys. Now a patent troll doing that same thing has nothing to lose and Nokia will only collect money with none of the associated risks. Of course they will have to share the gain but that is nothing compared to the satisfaction they will get seeing Android OEMs forced to defend themselves in a new fresh round of costly legal battles.
Did you even read the article before commentarding?
As it says there is a huge difference between FRAND patent aggregators than your standard patent trolls. In fact it can be argued that licensing a pool actually helps protect you from trolls as it makes sense for the pool owner to defend it against random trolls.
But hey don't let thought get in the way of a retarded comment.
"As it says there is a huge difference between FRAND patent aggregators than your standard patent trolls."
Is there? Or would you like everyone to focus on that lovely FRAND term, which is supposedly completely different from what Intellectual Vultures and pals offer those whom they have shaken down and those who don't let it get to that, and not the blatant similarities between those organisations and the one mentioned in the article. (FRAND sucks for a number of other reasons in the realm of open standards, but Nokia have been pushing for taxes on open standards for years, so nothing has changed there.)
The fact is that any separate "non-producing" entity who has acquired patents from a company who would themselves be at risk if they started to aggressively litigate, has done so in order to freely be able to threaten other producers, regardless of whether the targets of such threats already have a bunch of patents that claim the same thing (because the system is at the level of photocopying Monopoly banknotes to keep the game going a bit longer). And all this is for the benefit of the original owner of the patents who frequently gets a cut of the racketeering and obviously benefits from having their competitors in perpetual risk of having their products banned in various places.
"But hey don't let thought get in the way of a retarded comment."
Yeah, said like someone who walks the walk.
Had you read their comment and understood it in the context of the topic, you'd have understood the point. Here's another point to test your reading comprehension. If you are, say, IBM then it's quite likely that you'll tell the organisation concerned, "No, we won't license your patents because we have them already, and we don't see the need to pay you $10/unit to use our own patents." Is the remedy likely to be FRAND? I think not.
"In such fields some sort of aggregator is not only necessary, but desirable."
In other words, if there's a mobster who objects to your business, Mr Sisvel will have spoken to him and persuaded him to accept his services as "enforcer", so it's OK. Except when there's another mobster who Mr Sisvel didn't talk to. Where the troll label comes in is when the "enforcer", having spoken to enough mobsters, decides that he'll smash up a few businesses on the suspicion that, well, they must be infringing someone's patents. Where the cartel label comes in is when you look at who really owns Mr Sisvel's business.
Only apologists for the patent landfill, where everyone and their dog gets to stick their Post-It claims on everything, could sell a "solution" to what was also supposed to be a "solution". The problems, it would appear, are those pressing issues of how to skim off a nice little margin on someone else's industry and how to carve up an industry between a bunch of outfits who don't want any competition.
Keep on singing, by all means, but the song is awful.
Nice of you to announce your entrance.
"Until you do and can actually prove they are all silly ir trivial why don't you shut it?"
Nice of you to offer this high quality response to (1) this particular news item, (2) the general tendency of everyone with patents to currently be suing the pants off their competitors because they don't like the idea of those competitors (presumably with "valuable" expertise in the area concerned, too) actually - oh, what's the word? - *competing* with them, and (3) the continuous stockpiling of claims on everything under the sun, so that without the possibility of asking the judge to hold on for a bit while training a whole generation of people to wade into the stockpile, presumably whilst having yet more "first dibs" stuff floating in as if delivered by a fax machine belonging to someone claiming to be a reincarnation of "Jesus's boyfriend" whose number has been flashed up on a Fox News syndicate somewhere in a red state, the only option is to just treat such borderline extortion as the "cost of doing business".
Since you evidently have nothing to say to that, I suggest you heed your own advice and wear a badge with the label you suggested, in case you forget your role in this discussion.
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