Jun 16, 2011

On the Nokia vs Apple Settlement

The common interpretation is that Nokia won and Apple lost. Even John Gruber of Daring Fireball fame just reported the fact, without any comment whatsoever. However, the settlement is secret, so it's just as easy to argue that Apple won: Nokia wanted Apple to pay a hefty fee to license patents necessary to build iPhone. When Apple refused, Nokia had to back down and now gets a fraction of what they really wanted. I suspect that the truth is somewhere in between.

Remember that when the process started, Apple claimed that Nokia demanded unreasonable license terms. Apple did not say they wouldn't need to license Nokia's patents, but that Nokia refused to offer RAND* terms as required by the standards the patents applied to.

Sure, Apple sued Nokia in turn, but that is standard procedure in this kind of litigation. If you don't, you won't have anything to bargain with down the road.

The fact that they settled as fast as they did indicates that there was no real dispute about principles, and both sides are happy enough with the deal. The law suit was just part of license negotiations, maybe because Apple was in no hurry to get a license agreement in place, and Nokia decided to speed things up.

* Reasonable and non-discriminatory licensing (RAND)

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