Posted by ipeg on March 21st, 2011
Nokia, one of the leading mobile communications suppliers, is further put under pressure in its patent fight against IPCom. Recently, the Finnish company was the losing party in a patent infringement suit before the German regional court LG Mannheim on the infringement of a particular GSM and UMTS standard essential patent held by the IPCom GmbH, Munich. The recent judgment could be a turning point in a whole range of infringement and invalidity proceedings which are currently pending before courts in Europe.
The dispute about the patent...
Posted by ipeg on November 26th, 2010
The mobile communications industries is encountered by a so far unexampled burst of patent infringement claims. Almost all big market players are either faced with infringement claims driven by competitors or self taking court action. And also a few enterprises, which on the first sight having nothing to do with mobile communications like Eastman Kodak are involved in the quarrel. The recent developments in the industries in particular the rise of so called smart phones which comprise any possible functionality in just one device appears...
Posted by ipeg on August 22nd, 2010
The patent battle between Nokia and German IP asset management firm IPCom illustrates well the lack of practical understanding as to what fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (or FRAND) licensing terms practically means in Europe. IPEG blogged about this earlier. The conflict started at the end of 2006 when IPCom, a company founded by Bernhard Frohwitter and Christoph Schoeller, acquired the patent portfolio developed by Bosch in the late 80s and 90s for its mobile and in-car telephone systems. This portfolio has 160 patent families...
Posted by ipeg on June 6th, 2010
Thomas L. Friedman reminded us that “Invent, Invent, Invent” is the mantra to get us out of economic downturn. A surprising number of great companies, like General Electric, IBM, Kraft, McDonald’s, Walt Disney and Electronic Arts were formed in years that featured a recession, as did Motorola, HP, Xerox, Unisys, Texas Instruments and Revlon. The recession of the early 1990s hit much of the world. The rapid recovery from the recession and the growth of industrial output in Finland has been very much explained by the success...
Posted by ipeg on May 23rd, 2010
The Nokia vs. Apple patent dispute entered a new stage. Nokia recently brought up a fresh patent infringement action against Apple, alleging that Apple’s new iPad product infringes five Nokia patents. At a first glance, the recent lawsuit before the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin could be seen as nothing special. A patent holder just asserts his patents against an alleged technology “theft”. But it looks as if there is more behind all this.
We remember the first act of the dispute in October...
Posted by ipeg on November 10th, 2009
Lately patent infringing issues arising from implementing standard compliant products are catching the news media, among which in Europe the decision in Orange-Book-Standard by the German Bundesgerichthof (BGH). In the US Nokia sued Apple for producing it top selling iPhone compliant with the telecommunication standards GSM, UMTS and the networking standard WIFI, alleging 10 Nokia patents infringed. While these patents have been licensed by 40 other companies, including all major vendors of mobile devices, only Apple has refused to agree...
European IP Case Law (IPPT)