Nokia, Qualcomm Move Forward With Non-Patent-Fight-Based Relationship

from the wonders-never-cease dept

Wed, Feb 18th 2009 10:27pm — Carlo Longino

Qualcomm and Nokia have been involved in a long-running series of patent disputes over chips in mobile phones. The two companies settled the bulk of their disputes last summer, with Nokia throwing a chunk of change at Qualcomm and the two making nice. This week, the two companies announced they'd work together to put Qualcomm chips in Nokia devices. Nokia, the top global handset vendor, has never used Qualcomm chips, and the work will first be focused on devices for the US market, where Nokia's market share lags far behind its share in the rest of the world. So Qualcomm gets a big new chip customer, Nokia strengthens its offerings for the US markets, and consumers benefit from increased competition. Sounds good all around, and makes you wonder why the companies resisted such an approach in favor of the patent fight for so long.

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Filed Under: chips, mobile phones, patents
Companies: nokia, qualcomm

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Ronald J Riley (profile), 19 Feb 2009 @ 3:06am

Nokia took the low path.
"Sounds good all around, and makes you wonder why the companies resisted such an approach in favor of the patent fight for so long."

The reason it took so long is that Nokia was looking for a free ride. This forced Qualcomm to have to vigorously explain what patent property rights mean.

Ronald J. Riley,

Speaking only on my own behalf.
Affiliations:
President - www.PIAUSA.org - RJR act PIAUSA.org
Executive Director - www.InventorEd.org - RJR at InvEd.org
Senior Fellow - www.PatentPolicy.org
President - Alliance for American Innovation
Caretaker of Intellectual Property Creators on behalf of deceased founder Paul Heckel
Washington, DC
Direct (810) 597-0194 / (202) 318-1595 - 9 am to 9 pm EST.
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Anonymous Coward, 19 Feb 2009 @ 7:10am

In some instances patents can be viewed as the legal equivalent of a 2X4. You use them to slap mules along side the head to get their attention. This is possibly one such instance.
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Anonymous Coward, 19 Feb 2009 @ 9:22am

Sounds good all around, and makes you wonder why the companies resisted such an approach in favor of the patent fight for so long.

When the "system" is operating properly and issues are managed and dealt with by businessmen, including lawyers that think like businessmen, and not businessmen who react with a knee jerk and lawyers who think solely in terms of legal liability, many of these "battle of wills" would not arise.

Patents do have the salutory effect of being a catalyst for such deals, but it is important for these deals to happen that full control of the matter remain in the hands of the businessmen and not turned over by default to lawyers simply because a patent (or copyright) is involved.
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jonnyq, 19 Feb 2009 @ 12:45pm

Re: Nokia took the low path.
Wow... 7 lines of text touting yourself (appeal to authority) instead of backing up a bare assertion.
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Anonymous Coward, 19 Feb 2009 @ 1:29pm

Re: Nokia took the low path.
ooooh a lobbyist (AKA pimp)
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Anonymous Coward, 19 Feb 2009 @ 1:56pm

Rather than focusing on #1 above, perhaps it might be more useful to ponder the question "To what extent did competing patents encourage the parties to forge an agreement, or would this agreement have been forged anyway even without the competing patents?"
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Anonymous Coward, 19 Feb 2009 @ 6:06pm

Is it just me who is a bit struck by the absence of any comment from Mr. Masnick?
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Anonymous Coward, 19 Feb 2009 @ 7:01pm

Chipsets?
Are there really a lot of people out there who choose a phone based on the chipset used within it? I mean, I doubt if 99.9% of phone owners could even tell you what version of chipset was in in their phone, much less the pros and cons of said chipset. Phone companies apparently don't think so either because they rarely, if ever, even mention chipset versions in their phone marketing material.

So how does this "strengthen" Nokia in the US market? It sounds to me more like this is probably part of the settlement Nokia make with Qualcomm, i.e. Nokia only agreed to use Qualcomm chips in some of its phones in return for Qualcomm dropping the infringement suit, not because it would "strengthen its offerings".

"Nokia strengthens its offerings for the US markets"? Pffft.
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answer, 18 Oct 2009 @ 11:24pm

B2BSHOP
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answer, 18 Oct 2009 @ 11:27pm

B2BSHOP
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