The new realities in the extraordinarily lucrative smartphone business is the use of patents as a legal tool, as evidenced in the battle between Nokia (NYSE:NOK) and Apple NASDAQ:AAPL).
Paul Melin, Nokia's vice president of intellectual property, recently stated, "We treat intellectual property as a business here at Nokia. For us this dispute with Apple is nothing extraordinary, just an instance where one company has refused to pay its fair share for the use of technology we've contributed. ... We have started legal proceedings to enforce our legal rights on our intellectual property in order to get proper compensation, that's the gist of it."
"Apple put the building blocs that were largely built on Nokia's and others technologies together to a very high-end product initially, and then those products have reached a little bit lower price points," Melin added. "Some of Nokia's patents in suit against Apple originate from the mid-90s and describes the key features that you see in the iPhone."
Normally companies ultimately settle these types of cases, and usually those with less patents pay out to the larger holder, which in this case is Nokia.
There would also be licensing deals included in any type of settlement.
Nokia closed Tuesday at $8.77, gaining $0.05, or 0.57 percent. Apple closed at $338.89, dropping 2.30, or 0.67 percent.
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
Nokia (NOK), Apple (AAPL) Patent Battle Part of New Smartphone Business
Labels:
Apple,
Apple iPhone,
Nokia,
Smartphones
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