Nokia Officially Lists Patents Google's VP8 Allegedly Infringes 180
An anonymous reader writes "Google just settled video codec patent claims with MPEG LA and its VP8 format, which it wants to be elevated to an Internet standard, already faces the next round of patent infringement allegations. Nokia submitted an IPR declaration to the Internet Engineering Task Force listing 64 issued patents and 22 pending patent applications it believes are essential to VP8. To add insult to injury, Nokia's declaration to the IETF says NO to royalty-free licensing and also NO to FRAND (fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory) licensing. Nokia reserves the right to sue over VP8 and to seek sales bans without necessarily negotiating a license deal. Two of the 86 declared IPRs are already being asserted in Mannheim, Germany, where Nokia is suing HTC in numerous patent infringement cases. A first VP8-related trial took place on March 8 and the next one is scheduled for June 14. In related Nokia-Google patent news, the Finns are trying to obtain a U.S. import ban against HTC to force it to disable tethering (or, more likely, to pay up)."
A change of business model for Nokia? (Score:3, Interesting)
A patent on tethering? (Score:5, Interesting)
So Nokia apparently has some trash "routing data from one network to another ON A MOBILE DEVICE" patent, and Florian Mueller is breathless about it. What's new?
Re:Who is behind these Finns? (Score:5, Interesting)
Microsoft. Basically, when Elop took over, Nokia became an MS Vassal. That's when they dumped the world's most popular phone OS and their internal modern OS development projects for Windows Phone, and why Windows Phone ads use Nokia phones. It's basically the same play they ran when they got SGI to start building NT workstations. And, not that far off from the investments in SCO to enable the fight against Linux. Note that the MS Vassal is actively using their patent portfolio specifically to fight one of Google's strategic plays, despite the fact that a phone vendor that has given up on OS development would probably do much better if they added Android to their phone portfolio.
Re:A change of business model for Nokia? (Score:4, Interesting)
Could be quite bad if they do. Nokia's set of patents is a lot larger than SCO's was, and covers more recent things.
Re:Correct me if I'm wrong but... (Score:5, Interesting)
Nokia has been in phone business and phone related software business since the start. One could argue that they started the business in the first place and would be at least partially right.
They most definitely hold at least some patents that came to be before google was formed. And a whole lot more from time after google was formed but before it purchased android.
The problem is how they are choosing to use them. Normally you'd just negociate a licensing agreement and be done with it. But here, they're actually patent trolling. "We don't share the vision and do not want to help". So we sue to block. Ouch.
That's not the way nokia of old got to be on top. Elop and his microsoftism shines through.
Re:Correct me if I'm wrong but... (Score:4, Interesting)
Nokia is not a patent troll by any reasonable definition.
This was certainly true for a long part of the Nokia history. But the actual Nokia is something that have lost an extremely large amount of connections with the Nokia "mobile phone world leader" of the past. We are now forced to take notice that the actual Nokia is more and more close to the definition of patent troll. The latest new just confirm this trend.
Re:I hope Nokia's lawyers wreaks havoc (Score:4, Interesting)
The more interesting (though not entirely surprising) bit from this news is that MPEG LA might not actually own all the patents required for H.264 to work.
In which case it might be in MPEG LA's interest to work to invalidate the patents.