Apple and Nokia settle patent dispute, agree to multi-year license
Apple and Nokia on Tuesday said they have reached settlement in a five-month legal dispute over patent licensing practices, with the Cupertino tech giant agreeing to a multi-year license on the former top cellphone maker's intellectual property.
Apple will pay Nokia patent royalties over the term of the agreement, starting with an up-front cash payment that should be recognized by the second quarter of 2017. Details of the renewed collaboration are being kept confidential.
The settlement extends beyond IP, as Nokia has signed new business agreements to provide Apple with network infrastructure products and services.
Apple in return is restocking its shelves with connected health devices formerly sold under the Withings brand, products that were removed from circulation as a result of the patent row in December. Further, the companies said they are exploring future collaboration on digital health initiatives.
"We are pleased with this resolution of our dispute and we look forward to expanding our business relationship with Nokia," said Apple COO Jeff Williams.
To cement the new arrangement and keep the newfound peace, Apple and Nokia plan to hold regular summits between company executives.
Apple sparked the court kerfuffle in December when it leveled a lawsuit against Nokia and nine patent holdings firms, claiming the NPEs are working with Nokia to "extract and extort exorbitant revenues" from Apple and other manufacturers. As part of its opening legal volley, Apple said it would no longer pay Nokia royalties on IP used in products like iPhone.
In response, Nokia sued Apple in 11 countries including Germany and the U.S., alleging violation of 32 patents related to video coding technology, chipsets, antennas, displays and more. Nokia later expanded its legal barrage to 40 active suits worldwide, and sought to block U.S. imports of alleged infringing devices.
The new detente is reminiscent of a patent licensing agreement Apple and Nokia reached in 2011. Prior to being purchased by Microsoft, Nokia filed a number of lawsuits against Apple between 2009 and 2010 claiming infringement of patents covering GSM, camera subsystems and touch input, all key features of iPhone and iPad. Apple retaliated with a countersuit claiming violation of 13 patents.
Ironically, Apple cited the 2011 arrangement as a basis for its legal action in December, saying the deal served as a bedrock for "an illegal patent transfer scheme" involving patent aggregators like Acacia Research and Conversant.
Whether the new agreement will hold is unknown, but executives are hopeful that both companies can move forward without once again resorting to legal measures.
"This is a meaningful agreement between Nokia and Apple," said Maria Varsellona, Chief Legal Officer at Nokia. "It moves our relationship with Apple from being adversaries in court to business partners working for the benefit of our customers."
Apple will pay Nokia patent royalties over the term of the agreement, starting with an up-front cash payment that should be recognized by the second quarter of 2017. Details of the renewed collaboration are being kept confidential.
The settlement extends beyond IP, as Nokia has signed new business agreements to provide Apple with network infrastructure products and services.
Apple in return is restocking its shelves with connected health devices formerly sold under the Withings brand, products that were removed from circulation as a result of the patent row in December. Further, the companies said they are exploring future collaboration on digital health initiatives.
"We are pleased with this resolution of our dispute and we look forward to expanding our business relationship with Nokia," said Apple COO Jeff Williams.
To cement the new arrangement and keep the newfound peace, Apple and Nokia plan to hold regular summits between company executives.
Apple sparked the court kerfuffle in December when it leveled a lawsuit against Nokia and nine patent holdings firms, claiming the NPEs are working with Nokia to "extract and extort exorbitant revenues" from Apple and other manufacturers. As part of its opening legal volley, Apple said it would no longer pay Nokia royalties on IP used in products like iPhone.
In response, Nokia sued Apple in 11 countries including Germany and the U.S., alleging violation of 32 patents related to video coding technology, chipsets, antennas, displays and more. Nokia later expanded its legal barrage to 40 active suits worldwide, and sought to block U.S. imports of alleged infringing devices.
The new detente is reminiscent of a patent licensing agreement Apple and Nokia reached in 2011. Prior to being purchased by Microsoft, Nokia filed a number of lawsuits against Apple between 2009 and 2010 claiming infringement of patents covering GSM, camera subsystems and touch input, all key features of iPhone and iPad. Apple retaliated with a countersuit claiming violation of 13 patents.
Ironically, Apple cited the 2011 arrangement as a basis for its legal action in December, saying the deal served as a bedrock for "an illegal patent transfer scheme" involving patent aggregators like Acacia Research and Conversant.
Whether the new agreement will hold is unknown, but executives are hopeful that both companies can move forward without once again resorting to legal measures.
"This is a meaningful agreement between Nokia and Apple," said Maria Varsellona, Chief Legal Officer at Nokia. "It moves our relationship with Apple from being adversaries in court to business partners working for the benefit of our customers."
Comments
Nothing wrong with the Intel modems. So no, Apple is not screwing with customers.
what I got out of the announcement is that both Nokia and Apple are tired of the legal nonsense. Apparently, Apple's settlement is somewhat like the 2011 agreement, which is somewhere between what Apple and Nokia claimed. That's typical.
but I'm surprised by the new cooperation between the two. Nokia today is mostly a network and services company, and that will be useful to Apple.
the term "patent troll" makes me uncomfortable. What exactly does it mean? To me, it means an owner of a patent that waits for the device that uses the patent to become very popular before they pounce, hoping to get more than they would have if they sued in the beginning. In other words, it's the intent. But, companies like Qualcomm, Nokia and Samsung, all of which attempted to charge specific customers an order of magnitude (or more) for FRAND patents, could also be called trolls.
either those companies were in the same business as the companies they trolled, or they felt they had them by the throat.
the new Supreme Court decision as to where these patent cases will be held is a good thing that should have been done many years ago.
and, by the way, I'm surprised that you don't understand how business works. It's not PR at all, it's money and constraint.
Either late this year, or next year, Apple won't need Qualcomm as Intel has purchased a second radio company that builds CDMA radios, and has sufficient patents to allow Intel to build.d radios with bothe GSM and CDMA.
Patent troll has a pretty well defined explanation if you look at the patent reform bill and what they were trying to address. Most people think a NPE is automatically a patent troll, which is incorrect. Using this definition, all small inventors are patent trolls because they don't perform large scale manufacturing of a device that uses their invention.
It's the actions of a patent holder that define whether they are trolls. Things like threatening to sue and demanding a settlement. Suing the end users of a patented device and not the manufacturer. Double dipping on royalties. Jumping straight to a lawsuit without first attempting to negotiate a settlement. Filing vague lawsuits that don't clearly explain the infringement. And so on. And these actions can be carried out by a company that manufacturers devices or a patent holding company. Being the latter doesn't automatically make one a troll, though many of them are.
In any case I preferr this to a drawn out series of court cases.
large scale manufacturing has nothing to do with it. Most people would agree that an individual inventor who has attempted to manufacture a product, or take the patent out to licensing, which is what most inventors try to do, would not be a troll if, the patent is a valid contribution to the art, if they genuinely attempted to produce the product, if they attempted to communicate with those using the patent early on before taking it to court and if they were to attempt to obtain a reasonable return.
as I said, it's the intent, which obviously includes the actions. The intent defines the actions, and the intent gives action to the procedures used.
i doubt that Intel would try that. If their radios are up to snuff, and the pricing is right, I don't see Apple having a problem with it. You don't see Apple sharing x86 CPU manufacturing between Intel and AMD do you? And it was considered to be extremely unusual, and risky when Apple shared SoC manufacturing between Samsung and TSMC.
i would be surprised if this year, Intel's radio performance doesn't match that of Qualcomm. If they can produce one with CDMA as well, then that's all Apple needs, as long as it has all the freq bands. If not, then next year. Using two OEMs means more design and testing. The FCC would need more than one model of each phone. More expense and uncertainty.
now, Apple has applied for a license to test LTE 5G between their headcourters and an old campus. They got the license today. That's great, but we can't deliver more than about 10% of current LTE speeds almost anywhere.
2) Even if this capability was not available in a single market, it's still means that Intel's chips can be measured as inferior to Qualcomm's offerings in the same device. I'm personally not affected by this, and yet I'm glad that I have the model with the Qualcomm chip in case this helps with the resale value since Apple may update the drivers to support faster speeds in the future.