Recent discussions in class has really struck me when I came across this article regarding the battle between Nokia and HTC. We talked about how language is really important in determining infringement, and we analyzed the different preambles of patents. In the case with Nokia, the German court has not been kind with Nokia in granting injunction against HTC because its patent is still pending. In addition, HTC has also been invalidating Nokia's patents as a form of defense. Most invalidation comes because of the wordings of the claims, and it is said that HTC has been doing a good job so far defending itself.
However, as Nokia is in a similar position of what we mentioned as patent trolls in class. Nokia does not worry about losing those litigations. They can lose countless amounts of patent cases, but all Nokia needs is to win just one highly impactful patent, or a few that are collectively very impactful. To Nokia, it is like a soccer game, where it doesnt matter how many times you try to score because the final number of goals is what that matters.
This strategy is then even made easier for Nokia because of its patent portfolio which has enormous breadth and depth. They can easily bring new assertions to HTC, and it is a matter of time that Nokia will win this one major lawsuit against HTC. This can be said to be a sure-win strategy, but it will just be time and resources consuming. It is then up to either party to try to resolve this situation where it is a lose-lose for both, and settle for a much beneficial outcome.
I am not sure if it is accurate to define Nokia as patent trolls. I mean at least they are the actual inventor for the patents they use to sue other companies. Like you said, Nokia just wants to fight with others without worrying about the result of those litigations. I think it might be just an approach to protect itself cause it seems like no one can keep out of the patent war.
ReplyDeleteNokia, like Microsoft, was the tech giant for the last decades, and is still a company that own patent portfolio. However, as these patents starting to expire, Nokia need to push and extract the last bit of values from these patents thought litigation.
ReplyDeleteNokia surprisingly actually own a lot of valuable patents in the mobile device space particularly since they were on the first companies to create a cellphone that was a hit. But I agree with the previous commentor in assessing that they need to extract the value of their patents and protect their competitive claims through litigation or royalties.
ReplyDeleteLike i've mentioned in other blogs it's sad that Nokia has come this route. However, after reading Tik's comment I can kind of see why. I don't know why they jsut don't renew the patents and try to innovate new products since they were the first ones with cellhpones when they first came around.
ReplyDeleteNokia has been a long time runner in the mobile market, even though they were pushed aback by Apple and Samsung over the past few years, I don't think they are patent trolls because they're definitely trying to come back to the market with Microsoft. Noka simply has a large arsenal of patents to target a rival that's not as big as Apple and Samsung.
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