Speed bump. This will take years to litigate. RIM and Nokia still own smart phones. Apple is on a #3 perch and will be toppled by Android soon enough. Whether it’s in 12 months or 18 months doesn’t matter too much. Android has too much momentum coming from too many players for one company to hold back. Android is also making its way into MIDs and small tablets, and could very easily jump to TVs in the under $2000 space. It’s more than just phones. It gets to a lot of places where Apple does not play and are less reachable by even the overly broad Apple patents.

So if what Reiner is saying is actually true, and not just typical analyst stock cheerleading, the handset makers are retrenching. They’re not going to concede their individual shares of a good thing (total Android share) to a belligerent Apple, especially when there is so much discontent with Apple’s policies to tap into. Give it a couple months and they’ll all be full steam ahead again.

At the same time, everyone is looking for the first person to punch schoolyard bully Apple in the mouth. Once someone draws a little blood, everyone is gonna take their turn. I’d look to Verizon with an HP or Dell tablet mocking the iPad, like their “Droid Does” commercial did with the iPhone. But a sucker punch might also come from the Apple/Nokia dispute. I just don’t think Apple has the stomach to play by schoolyard rules.

This is awesome!  Apple should be defending their patents like this. It will only help competition in making other handhelds use innovation to keep up, and not just steal ideas.  I see this as a big win for Apple!

It will only help competition in making other handhelds use innovation to keep up, and not just steal ideas.

Yeah, I hate it when companies steal intellectual property. I think all companies that steal intellectual property should be fined into oblivion! Oh wait, Apple stole Nokia’s intellectual property… oops.

Apple didnt steal Nokias property. They didnt want to be forced to paying more than other phone makers for an standard technology to subsidize Nokia’s   lack on R&D into multi-touch. Your claim that Apple stole anything will eventually be exposed as the BS it is

+

When Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone in 2007, he mentioned the number of patents they had on the device, and pledged to defend them. Now they’re defending them, as they should.

It’s real easy to look at something like the “swipe to unlock” patent and call it absurd, but who knows how long it took for Apple to come up with the concept itself? How many concepts were tried, and dollars in R&D spent, before that and other iPhone gestures were perfected?

Something’s only obvious after someone else comes up with it, you know.

Apple has paid no royalties to Nokia over 3G patents that Apple cannot avoid using to be on AT&T’s 3G network. Let’s say you wanted to rent my house, and you moved in without agreeing with me what the rent was going to be and without making any payments. Are you frakking seriously saying that you’re not stealing from me? Really? And then on top of that, you’re gonna whine and bitch about fairness because I’m gonna demand a little more from you since you already moved into my house without an agreement? Child, please!!

But the topper is when someone else comes along and borrows your bicycle, you get all moralistic about how you’re all for everyone having bicycles, but people need to buy their own. That’s douchebaggery, Apple style.

@ Bosco
You sound like you are reaching for an argument that isn’t there.

No one has shown Apple stole anything from anybody and VV.  We will see what the courts decide.  The fact that the others are scared implies they have something to hide.

Apple brought more than innovation to the cell phone market, they brought invention - something no one thought of before.  Eye candy is innovation.  Packaging a computer in a phone that runs all day and runs a real Browser is invention.

Um BenG… If your iPhone is displaying that “3G” logo and you have AT&T service, it’s an infringing device. The proof you seek is in your hands. Nokia has its whole 3G patent portfolio. You can’t connect to a 3G network like AT&T has deployed unless you use processes described in those patents. Apple went to market without securing a license. Apple claims that Nokia promised to license under “non-discriminatory terms” and then didn’t. But let’s say I promise to give you a good guy price on renting my house. We don’t agree to actual terms and then you move in. Seriously?!?

@Che Bosco
What a bozo you seem to be. You can look ok, but you sure can’t see. Your analogies are deeply flawed too. Why did Nokia delay so long before complaining? They knew there was an inter-dependency here; that they needed Apple’s IP in UI to compete in 2010 and Apple needed their older but essential IP to build a phone. But, as a failing company, Nokia wanted to screw Apple to punish them for daring to invade their not-so-smart phone fiefdom and embarrass them by the sheer excellence of iPhone v1. You should read the arrogant, condescending but deeply mistaken bullshit Nokia’s chief tech guru has written about the iPhone. If you check on counternotions.com, you will find a link.

In fact you should read this first:
http://counternotions.com/2009/08/26/pre-iphone/

and then the Nokia bozo’s ramblings if you don’t fall asleep in the first minute of trying.

This too will educate you: http://counternotions.com/2009/04/20/nokia/

Apple makes one phone. Nokia makes 220 or more different models (SKUs) at any given time. Nokia is the experienced phone maker and Apple is still in learning mode. And yet on iPhone, Apple makes more in net earnings than Nokia made on sales of ALL its products. 220 different phones in the market place and still a FAIL? One phone format in the market and whip everybody’s arse as a resounding success?

Nokia hate Apple for embarrassing them so thoroughly and so publicly and so profitably. It is known that Nokia tried to gouge Apple on patent licensing by charging them far more than its normal license costs to other players. That’s out and out wrong.  That is why Apple correctly refused to pay. Apple has cross-sued for infringements by Nokia on its patents. Unlike you, bleating child that you are, they will come to an arrangement. At one level this is fierce competition. At another level, everybody plays ball because life must go on, there is business to be done and phones to be built and sold. Both have IP they will defend and quite right too. But they already collaborate too. Nokia needs Apple far more than vv. So Nokia will lose that lawsuit against Apple because of gross and punitive overcharging and yet Nokia will also win a little victory by adding Apple as a licensee at normal pricing levels. They too will license Apple’s IP in return.
Sadly, nothing will help Nokia in the long term though. They are doomed.
However, the real enemy here are the, mostly Chinese, manufacturers who rarely invent anything, have little IP as a result and yet steal from everyone. Now that is a target that’s worth focusing a lot of litigation weaponry on.
Got it now?
Give credit where it’s due.
Apple is the only company with a clue here.

@Chandra… That’s all nice. One unavoidable fact is that Apple is using Nokia’s 3G patents without a license. Everyone in the game may very well be, and probably is, just as guilty as Apple of using IP they don’t have a license to use. Hardball business, the courts, and the ITC will sort that out.

But there are also rules to this silly game too. And as Jonathan Schwartz kinda points out via another TMO article today, you don’t act like too much of an asshole when most of the other players hold cards like yours. You certainly don’t call out another company in your public statement announcing your lawsuit with (paraphrasing) “We’re all for vigorous competition, but will not tolerate anyone stealing from us.”—clear douchebaggery. And those who vigorously defend it are guilty of the same. Schwartz pretty much confirmed two things for us: (1) that Steve Jobs is the biggest d-bag ever, and (2) that nobody at Apple has the balls to tell him that he is out of control. Because it’s blatantly obvious to his CEO peers on the outside.

Hey People!!  Che Bosco sometimes makes good points.  This one of them.  If you think Che is being annoying, just ignore him.  He is just pushing your buttons..

I am Mac through and though but I do not worship at the alter of “His Steveness”.