Nokia's older mobes infringe IPCom patent – court Nokia has lost a patent dispute with intellectual property firm IPCom in the Mannheim regional court in Germany. The court ruled that Nokia mobiles were infringing on a patent related to emergency services access, but the Finnish phone firm said the violating phones were all old ones. "The Mannheim court found that Nokia’s …
"The Mannheim court found that Nokia’s older phones would have infringed the patent. We respectfully disagree with this decision, but almost all of these phones pre-dated the grant of the patent in February 2011"
How does that not invalidate the patent in the first place? Heck, how does even _filing_ the suit does not invalidate the patent, making the suit unnecessary?
Were the patents not filed a while back by Bosch, I can't understand the 2011 date.
Is this the new way to deal with patent trolls, keep them in court so long that by the time judgement is passed it doesn't matter if you win or loose because you have moved on and developed a workaround.
Easy... Nokia uses a technology for years without filing a patent for it. Then comes Bosch and patents it. IPCom buys the old Bosch patents, and they are refiled. Since Nokia used the technology before IPCom refiled for patents, they are safe.
But they can not use the technology after a patent has been filed - which they (Nokia) don't.
IPCom sole purpose it to buy patents from others and sue all the companies they can to make a buck. They are the worst patent trolls arond. Even worse then Apple from the look of it.
" So far, 61 IPCom patents have been found invalid as granted or conceded as invalid by IPCom .."
IPCom are supposed to understand patents, they 'deal' in them. In every case like this, for every patent found to be invalid, another patent (chosen by the defendant) should be struck out from the 'pool' and the plaintiff charged full court costs for that percentage of patents struck out from the action.
Nokia is still the worlds largest mobile phone maker in the world. They also have a massive patent portfolio. It you look at how many WP phones they are selling now - you will see that they have overcome the massive problems they had for a while.
But I still think they should have continued with both Symbian Bell and newer, and MeeGo. I know they will continue with Linux based phones in the future - but they will transition the feature phones to smart phones in a few years. 2015 has been mentioned. That way developing nations can buy phones that works like todays smart phones in just 2-3 years time - and they will be dirt cheap. Todays smart phones will ofcourse continue to develope further.
At work we the the change in screen size sales. 3,7" is the minimum phone screen we sell now. iPhone 4S is to small and the sales have dropped sharply the last 4-5 weeks. The customers are waiting for the iPhone 5 - IF it comes with a bigger screen. Just look at the Samsung Note, Galaxy SII and Nokia Lumia 900 sales. Screen size it just that important now.
But the patents the IPCom patent trolls are trying to get cash for is many many years old. You're talking 5-10 years old since Nokia used it, and then it was not patented. It was patented after Nokia stopped useing it.
I can't understand this...
If what the previous comments have indicated is true - that Nokia had been using the technology for years, before it was patented by Bosch - then how did the patent even get granted?
Aren't patents supposed to be ways for someone to protect their innovation and invention?
If Bosch can patent something which Nokia had been using for years, then how does prior art work? (Or does prior art just not work anymore?)
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