Sony, Nokia proxy company awarded $3 million in latest round of patent battles with Apple

Comments

• Reply 1 of 11

  cali Posts: 3,494member

  September 21, 2016 7:28PM

  The iPhoney manufacturers sued Apple?
• Reply 2 of 11

  jfanning Posts: 3,398member

  September 21, 2016 7:42PM

  cali said:

  The iPhoney manufacturers sued Apple?

  MPEG-LA makes a device called the iPhoney?
  
• Reply 3 of 11

  goofy1958 Posts: 165member

  September 21, 2016 8:33PM

  That patent is one of the dumbest things I have ever read.  How an idiot at the patent office granted a patent on this is quite unbelievable.  We need patent overhaul, and we need it soon.
  

  
• Reply 4 of 11

  nolamacguy Posts: 4,758member

  September 21, 2016 8:42PM

  unless any of their implementation (code) wound up inside of iOS, this is further proof that software patents are bogus and need to go away. Ideas shouldn't be patentable, only implementations. Thus no to "flying car", yes to "anti-grav engine that works like this". 
  
  code is speech and copyright protects it. you can't copy mine but you can come up with and write your own. just like, say, spy novels. 

  edited September 2016
• Reply 5 of 11

  boredumb Posts: 1,418member

  September 21, 2016 9:23PM

  ...didn't hear that coming.

  
• Reply 6 of 11

  Herbivore2 Posts: 367member

  September 21, 2016 9:26PM

  Apple has sourced their digital cameras for the iPhone from Sony for a number of years. It's time to drop Sony as a component supplier. 
  
  Perhaps Sony is upset with Apple turning to LG Innotek for the iPhone camera. The image sensor, however, is still a Sony product. 
  
  Not much can be done about Nokia as they don't build any iPhone component(s).
  
  3 million is a blip compared to Apple's profits, but the infringement suit would seem pretty lame and without merit unless Apple did steal implementation process from Sony and/or Nokia. It's doubtful that this would be the case and I would expect Apple to prevail. 
• Reply 7 of 11

  crowley Posts: 10,453member

  September 21, 2016 10:14PM

  Herbivore2 said:

  Apple has sourced their digital cameras for the iPhone from Sony for a number of years. It's time to drop Sony as a component supplier. 
  
  Perhaps Sony is upset with Apple turning to LG Innotek for the iPhone camera. The image sensor, however, is still a Sony product. 
  
  Not much can be done about Nokia as they don't build any iPhone component(s).
  
  3 million is a blip compared to Apple's profits, but the infringement suit would seem pretty lame and without merit unless Apple did steal implementation process from Sony and/or Nokia. It's doubtful that this would be the case and I would expect Apple to prevail. 

  The last time I read into the subject, Sony made the best iPhone suitable image sensors on the market by a margin. To give that up, and all of the iPhone camera plaudits, for the the sake of an unrelated $3m patent dispute would seem not only petty, but self-defeating.  It's nothing.

  
• Reply 8 of 11

  jfanning Posts: 3,398member

  September 21, 2016 10:15PM

  Herbivore2 said:

  Apple has sourced their digital cameras for the iPhone from Sony for a number of years. It's time to drop Sony as a component supplier. 
  
  Perhaps Sony is upset with Apple turning to LG Innotek for the iPhone camera. The image sensor, however, is still a Sony product. 
  
  Not much can be done about Nokia as they don't build any iPhone component(s).
  
  3 million is a blip compared to Apple's profits, but the infringement suit would seem pretty lame and without merit unless Apple did steal implementation process from Sony and/or Nokia. It's doubtful that this would be the case and I would expect Apple to prevail. 

  Sony owns a whole 5% of this organisation, they will received a whole $150k less the lawyers cut, I don't think they are in this for the money
  
  Nokia owns a whole 5% of this organisation.  Of course you will remember that Nokia owns a metric tonne of patents in the mobile arena, they are meant to be receiving 8 euro a phone from Apple for licencing payments.
  
  So for Nokia/Sony owning a combined 10%, why are you naming them, surely this is all MPEG-LA's doing?

  
• Reply 9 of 11

  analogjack Posts: 1,073member

  September 21, 2016 11:03PM

  Ring silencing patent, FFS has the world gone made. What would Heinrich Hertz make of all this, he was the first to test the implications of Maxwell's EM equations and transmitted a radio signal across his laboratory, once he proved the proof of concept, he was done and left it to Marconi to turn it into something. Same with the guy who invented the telegraph, Joseph Henry, he had a one mile telegraph built from the university to his home so he could let his wife know when he was coming home for lunch, he wasn't interested in patenting it, even wikipedia credits Samuel Morse as the inventor which was impossible because he didn't know enough science to make it work.

  
• Reply 10 of 11

  xzu Posts: 139member

  September 22, 2016 4:38PM

  You can probably find 3 million dollars in between the seat cushions in Apple headquarters waiting room. Who am I kidding, the couch is probably manufactured to the highest standards out of alooomaineeeeum. Nonetheless, a pittance that is probably dwarfed by the legal fees.
• Reply 11 of 11

  verne arase Posts: 460member

  September 23, 2016 7:47AM

  Maybe you can't beat them, but make them pay it all to the lawyers.