back to article Nokia cries patent 'Havoc!', unleashes dogs of law on two continents

Nokia has filed suit against HTC, Research in Motion and Viewsonic in two different countries all in one day. The Finnish phone firm announced today that it had filed claims in both the US and Germany alleging that products from the three firms infringed on a number of its patents. "Nokia is a leader in many technologies …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I'm guessing Nokia saw the HTC One

    And realized how crap their "smart"phones were in comparison.

    As a last ditch resort, they figured they may as well sue anyone with anything...

    Also my crystal ball predicts that only Android HTC phones will infringe these patents, and the stockroom dust gathering HTC WIndows Phones will be fine by pure coincidence...

    1. The Man Who Fell To Earth Silver badge
      Boffin

      Re: I'm guessing Nokia saw the HTC One

      As the article states quite clearly, Nokia is quite happy to license it's patents all over the place. So the issue isn't that Nokia has a problem with RIM, ViewSonic & HTC using it's inventions, The problem is using them without paying.

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    4. Anonymous Coward
      FAIL

      Re: I'm guessing Nokia saw the HTC One

      Actually a couple of years ago I switched from using HTC for several years to Nokia, which I'd never used before.

      Superb build quality on the Nokia and I simply cannot see what all the criticisms are concerning Symbian. It works very well. Lots of decent and checked apps on the Nokia Store, probably lower risk than the open Android store.

      Great call quality.

      Some models have truly outstanding battery life. I fact just testing the battery life on an E72, it was last charged on 11 April - currently 21 days on standby without recharge and still looks like I might squeeze a few more days out of it, even possibly a full 4 weeks!

      As for IP. If you came up with a great idea would you not be hacked off if someone copied it and was making money off it? I am not particularly pro all these IP wars and enriching lawyers at all, but credit where credit is due, and Nokia are open for settling it seems.

      1. Ilsa Loving
        FAIL

        Re: I'm guessing Nokia saw the HTC One

        And this is why people are abandoning Nokia right left and centre. They had some fantastic stuff, and instead of nurturing it they literally threw it all away. Now they have a mobile OS from another company that has a reputation for being crap, and no one wants to touch it.

      2. Voland's right hand Silver badge
        Devil

        Re: I'm guessing Nokia saw the HTC One

        You are mistaking E72 (and 71) which are the crown jewels of Nokia and Symbian for the average Symbian phone.

        A good counterexample would be N95 - the supposedly super-phone/mobile computer to provide functionality on par with the original iPhone. Its software had so many memory leaks and bugs that it could not stay up for more than 10 minutes with heavy data or VOIP use. Non-working camera software, filesystems chronically corrupt - you name. The joy of Nokia "as shipped".

        In any case, in terms of build quality the only thing on the market to really rival the iDevices is Sony Ericsson. Neither the HTC, nor Samsung come anywhere near. While it may not have the latest software, in terms of "well made" it is way better.

        1. Anonymous Coward 101

          Re: I'm guessing Nokia saw the HTC One

          Shhhhh! Everyone knows Nokia were perfect until Elop took over. That they released phones that barely worked is missed.

          Screw Nokia! They fail at everything.

        2. Argh

          Re: I'm guessing Nokia saw the HTC One

          @Voland's right hand.

          What rubbish. The N95 came out before the original iPhone, it had 3G, GPS, and a great camera (for the time), TV output, multi-tasking, and it allowed applications to be installed. I don't believe that the original iPhone had any of these. Oh yeah, it also had basic features available on almost every phone such as MMS.

          The N95 was so far ahead of its time with respect to the hardware, even in its slightly chunky package.

          To phrase your sentence as if Nokia were competing with a phone that wasn't yet released is silly.

          I also had no big problems with the N95. While the later firmware updates did improve the memory usage (particular demand paging) to allow more multi-tasking, it was still very functional before that.

          Obviously the iPhone had a much bigger screen, a touch screen, looked better and was a lot less technical to use, but if you knew what you were doing, the N95 blew it out of the water with features. Satnav would be an obvious example.

          (not any kind of fanboi, btw, I happily switch to whatever platform is most useful for me at the time, and I'm certainly not using Symbian any more!)

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: I'm guessing Nokia saw the HTC One

            "not any kind of fanboi, btw"

            lol are you joking? If the N95 was such a brilliant phone and so far ahead of it's time why is Nokia such a flop?

            The iphone was release a couple of months after, so it's fair to compare them, and it was rubbish right????

            The 1000's of people queing around the block the night before it's even released seem to disagree.

            I've never seen that behaviour for a Nokia.

      3. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: I'm guessing Nokia saw the HTC One

        Unfortunately, Symbian is dead, and Nokia are heading down the suicidal Windows Phone route.

        They have long since passed the Android last-chance saloon.

    5. Gordon 10
      Happy

      Re: I'm guessing Nokia saw the HTC One

      Hello Barry. Paranoid much?

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    jee

    I wish I was some king of IP Lawyer - I would be so very rich...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: jee

      kind not king, silly me.

      Though if I were the king of the IP Lawyers I'd probably be even richer.

  3. Outcast !!!

    As what I said earlier...

    http://forums.theregister.co.uk/post/1394590

    1. Tim Parker

      Re: As what I said earlier...

      What...

      'No officer above the rank of mess sergeant is permitted to go into combat with pierced nipples.'

      ..or was that 5796 ?

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: As what I said earlier...

      Whatever.

      Commentard has no obvious credibility to justify reader bothering to follow link.

      Commentard should provide link as evidence, but only after quoting self to give reader idea that what was said earlier matters a damn to anyone.

      Commentard clearly suffers self import out of proportion to the interest of others.

  4. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
    Devil

    "our standards essential patents" ... Schnell!

    As Neal Stephenson once wrote...

    "Finns are like Germans. Only more so!"

  5. asdf
    FAIL

    what a crock

    >We'd rather that other companies respect our intellectual property and compete using their own innovations

    Which would be true if the patent system was not hopeless broken to the point it is now impossible to make a clean room smartphone from the ground up without paying lots of extortion patents. A great metaphor is you should be able to patent a particular bridge design (implementation) but not the idea of a bridge itself which is basically what the current patent system allows.

    1. Dazed and Confused

      Re: what a crock

      I suspect that Nokia are talking a lot of real patents here, things like antenna design was mentions in the article. We probably aren't talking "its a rectangle" type patents.

    2. asdf
      FAIL

      Re: what a crock

      You may be right especially considering Chinese/Taiwan companies have been known to parrot a product or two. Still I am sure many of the patents cited won't pass the sniff test even if some do.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Trollface

    Great fun!

    Now Microsoft gets to attack again the Android makers that are already paying the patent extortion, through their subsidiary Nokia! They didn't even have to wait for Elop to finish destroying the old giant!

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Used to be a phone maker.

    Actually used to be THE phone maker.

    Now it's just a patent troll. What a mess.

  8. dotdavid
    FAIL

    If at first you don't succeed...

    ...sue, sue again?

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Hang on a minute

    Did they say they have patents relating to, "app stores" ?

    **grabs a beer, sits back and prepares to watch the fight**

  10. Simon Davidson
    Alert

    Have you tried Windows Phone 7.5

    I don't know what everyones problem is with Windows Phone 7.5, have you actually used?

    I have a Nokia Lumia 800 and it so much better than my old HTC Desire (I know its an old phone). Its display is sharp and quick, battery lasts longer than my old HTC, despite Nokia admitting their are problems with the battery. Call quality is some of the best I've had.

    Yes there are issue with the number of apps on the marketplace, but lets face it, most people get a couple apps that they stick to and the rest are all fart apps, or other rubbish.

    I really do hope Microsoft succeed because having only 2 competitors on the market is not good for the consumer.

    Now I'm no Microsoft zealot, I can see their failings as well, I'm particularly annoyed at the lack of clarity on the Windows Phone 8 upgrades, and the lack of VPN support on Windows Phone 7. But in my honest opinion its at least on par with what Android and Apple are offering...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      FAIL

      Re: Have you tried Windows Phone 7.5

      I have a Lumia 800 and is so much worse than my old Nexus One. It has a nice display and a nice camera, but the battery lasts even less than the old battery of the N1. Call quality is the same or better on the N1 - remember the N1 has a noise canceling microphone, which is the main difference from the Desire.

      Apps are mostly inferior and more expensive than the android counterparts. No call blocker app. No ad blocker app.

      Bluetooth doesn't allow sending anything.

      No mass storage USB support.

      No uSD.

      25% of the main screen wasted to show an arrow.

      Useless search button, tied to bing and not context sensitive, the functionality has to be duplicated in the apps (IE market, mail, etc. all have a "second" search button).

      Slow (very slow rendering complex sites) browser.

      No flash.

      Inconsistent multitasking, you never know how an app will react when you switch back to it, if it will restart, or if it has kept running or has been suspended. Also most times pressing the tile for the running app will make it restart, losing the context it was when you switched out.

      Rigid, non-configurable and non-interactive tiles.

      No possibility to organize apps apart from the first screen tiles and the second screen alphabetical order. No folders.

      Limited functionality for third party apps - skype can't run in the background, box and dropbox clients can't automatically upload new photos, etc.

      No tethering (it has been promised a few times, but nothing yet).

      I'm glad you're happy with it - but it really is not on par with Android. I have no idea about iOS, but android has a huge lead on whatever WP7.5 offers.

    2. illiad

      Re: Have you tried Windows Phone 7.5

      I think the point is not 'windows phone' (no matter how much you like / hate it..) but whether the LOGO on the phone changes from 'Nokia' into 'Microsoft' ....

      whoops, there goes another good business, ruined by short-sighted people.... IBM did it refusing to believe people would see 'cheap PCs' as at all reliable.. they tried a budget line, tried to pretend it wasn't their Idea, that most saw though like glass... what are they doing now???

      even MS is having problems about upgrading from XP - but there are enough people sharing a braincell to just go and buy a new PC with the latest MS..

  11. illiad

    windows phone?? wassat??

    most do not even see it.. they just get what the salesmen are pushing..

    Lumia?? oh nice, colorful, my mate says apple is way too expensive...

    he will be back next year, when the new iphone is out, gotta have the latest fashion!!!

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