Between the Lines

Larry Dignan, Andrew Nusca and Rachel King

Nokia adds Apple's iPad 3G to its lawsuit parade: The 5 patents in question

By | May 7, 2010, 8:46am PDT

Summary: Nokia has filed a lawsuit against Apple in a Federal court in Wisconsin over five patents (3 related to antenna intellectual property). Nokia, which is already suing Apple over the iPhone, added iPad 3G products to its list of targets.

Nokia said Friday that it has sued Apple over the iPad too.

In its latest lawsuit (download PDF), Nokia has filed a lawsuit against Apple in a Federal court in Wisconsin over five patents. Nokia, which is already suing Apple over the iPhone, added iPad 3G products to its list of targets.

Nokia said in its complaint that Apple is infringing on one or more of its patents with the “iPhone, iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS, and iPad 3G. The Wi-Fi only iPad is off the list. Also: Nokia sues Apple again; iPhone, iPad 3G patents at stake

According to Nokia:

Nokia is harmed by Apple’s unauthorized use of Nokia patented technology in a way that cannot be compensated for by a payment of damages alone. Nokia and Apple compete directly, with respect to at least certain Apple product offerings. Apple’s unauthorized use of the patents-in-suit in its products at the time of their sale allows it to charge less for its products because it does not have to recover the costs of development of the technology used in the device. This allows it to obtain market share that it would otherwise not be able to obtain were its products to bear the costs for the patented technology.

The patents include:

6,317,083 (“the 083 Patent”): This patent is entitled “Antenna Having a Feed and a Shorting Post Connected Between Reference Plan and Planar Conductor Interacting to Form a Transmission Line,” was issued in late 2001.

6,348,894 (“the 894 Patent”): The patent is called “Radio Frequency Antenna,” was issued in 2002. The patent “reduces the space needed for an antenna, allowing tighter integration of components and smaller, more compact mobile phones.”

6,373,345 (“the 345 Patent”): This patent is called “Modulator Structure for a Transmitter and Mobile Station” issued in 2002. Nokia says:

The 345 Patent is directed to a modulator with a high signal-to-noise ratio. Wireless communication devices, such as mobile phones, include one or more modulators that modify a carrier wave in order to transmit data. One of the most important characteristics of a modulator is its signal-to-noise ratio. Transmissions with a high signal-to-noise ratio are more likely to be received, offering a better experience to users. The 345 Patent provides a high signal-to-noise ratio while reducing the number of filters needed to do so.

6,603,431 (“the 431 Patent”): This patent is the “Mobile Station and Antenna Arrangement in Mobile Station” and was issued in 2003. Nokia says:

The patent allows for an internal antenna with greater performance by creating an antenna assembly space free of the printed circuit board. The increased space allows for design of slimmer devices and improves the antenna characteristics, including a broader impedance band and better radiation efficiency.

And 7,558,696: The 696 patent was issued 2009 and called the “Method and Device for Position Determination.” Nokia adds:

The 696 Patent relates to providing a centralized interface for applications running on a mobile device to obtain position data. The 696 Patent allows, for example, for application developers to make use of existing positioning capabilities, without having to write as much code for their applications.

Related:

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Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of ZDNet and SmartPlanet as well as Editorial Director of ZDNet's sister site TechRepublic.

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Biography

Larry Dignan

Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of ZDNet and SmartPlanet as well as Editorial Director of ZDNet's sister site TechRepublic. He was most recently Executive Editor of News and Blogs at ZDNet. Prior to that he was executive news editor at eWeek and news editor at Baseline. He also served as the East Coast news editor and finance editor at CNET News.com. Larry has covered the technology and financial services industry since 1995, publishing articles in WallStreetWeek.com, Inter@ctive Week, The New York Times, and Financial Planning magazine. He's a graduate of the Columbia School of Journalism and the University of Delaware.

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RE: Nokia adds Apple's iPad 3G to its lawsuit parade: The 5 patents in question
yarinsiz Updated - 11th May 2011
Great!!! thanks for sharing this information to us!
seslisohbet seslichat
Hey Nokia: Why not spend your time and effort to release PR1.2 for maemo or anything at all to complete or make more useful the n900 that today, 6months later, does not even support Ovi Suite? Thanks.
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Afraid Apple would sue them?
John Zern 7th May 2010
Maybe they're worried Apple would try to sue Nokia for releasing a phone with Nokia's own patented IP in it?
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Nokia - Useless company
croberts 7th May 2010
Antenna position?
Position determination for location? (I assume that's an SDK for GPS)..

Are they kidding? Talk about a company being out of touch with reality. Why don't they patent touch-tone dialing while they are at it....
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Don't blame Nokia
OhTheHumanity 7th May 2010
They are just playing the same game as everyone else. Apple is out suing for dumb stuff too and though it may not be right it is how it is and really kind of levels the playing field since they are all playing the same game.
@daMan25 So it's okay that Nokia does it but when Apple does it it's bad... As NZ would say "Cue the double standards"...
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OS Reload Updated - 7th May 2010
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I don't see Nokia stealing Apple's excellent marketing work so why should Apple be allowed to get a free ride on Nokia's hard work?
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@athynz No I never said it was alright for Nokia, I mean it may not be right in our eyes, but both companies are playing the same game here so to call one out of touch over the other is just not true.
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@daMan25 I agree here. If a patent is issued, then that's basically it. If it can be proven they have a patent and it's been infringed upon, sorry. That's why there are things called patents. Alot of people on these msg boards would seemingly be very dishonest business persons it seems - the way they talk; or else some of them are just plain ignorant.

People are saying only Apple can sue if someone steals one of their patented ideas, but other companies cannot sue Apple if Apple steals? Lol....
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@daMan25 Suing to protect your property is dumb? For that is what a patent is. It provides a property protection in an idea, product, part for an existing product etc. It is no different in that respect than your car. You buy and file papers proving you own it. But I guess you would not have any problem if someone else just decided they liked your car better and took it. No you would not file a police report. Or if the other person said it was their car, I guess you would just walk away, because suing then to prove it was yours would be dumb.

Using someone else's patented item is STEALING plain and simple. Without patent protection there would not be very little if any advancement in Technology.

The biggest difference here is that Nokia would most likely have licensed the tech. to Apple. Where as Apple doesn't license anything.
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@croberts
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Concerning antenna design.
Mabrick 7th May 2010
@croberts Antenna design is a non-trivial science and any patent Nokia was awarded for making mobile antennas smaller and better is well earned. My call sign, KB7MFU, qualifies me to say so. How about you?

Apple needs to pony up and pay royalties. The iPhone didn't happen just because Steve Jobs waved his magic wand. He goes on and on about protecting Apple from thieves who would steal their hard work. Apple has sued HTC over their software for just such a reason. Hardware counts too. Jobs needs to look in the mirror the next time he talks about thieves.
@Mabrick: Apple has hardware patents, too, that it claims HTC infringed.
If Apple didn't sue HTC, its board of directors (including Jobs) might themselves be sued by Apple shareholders. The iPhone technology is just too good... and everyone knows it, including the competition.
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@athynz

It is not a double standard against Apple. Nokia is open to other phone manufacturer licensing these technologies provided royalties are paid. What Apple want with their patent is, they want to keep it and sue the hell out of every other competitor so that no rival products can exists. There is a BIG difference between the two, and if there is a double standard here, Steve Jobs has no one to blame except himself.

And quite frankly, justified or not, sentimentally A LOT of people want to see Apple get a taste of its own medicine.
@CyberGuerilla

You speak for most of us with some common sense; along the lines of 'those who live by the sword, die by the sword'. Apple aplay this game to enclose their monopoly then bleet when others try it. At least Nokia have the clout to stand and fight, and also have the courtesy to share. Share isn't something Apple are particularly good at unless you add 'share at great cost'.

It's good to see Apple prosper; it's good to see Apple bring new ideas to the fore BUT it's just not accepatable to think you can own an idea. They'll be claiming they invented colour next!

One day we'll all work together instead of being polarised in pathetic fanboy arguments... maybe???
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As Apple is demonstrating good marketing is what really matters. Why spend time and money innovating when you can steal other companies hard work and go to market faster?

Add a bit of clever marketing to the mix, a huge dose of hubris and an expert mass manipulator and you have a seriously winning formula in your hands.

Who needs hard work when you can simply steal?
Who needs to do engineering hard work when you can simply steal it?

Forget engineering, Marketing is the future.
@OS Reload: So you're saying this lawsuit is just a marketing ploy by Nokia? Sounds reasonable to me. It may even be a CYA move by Nokia (mis)management.
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@croberts - I would imagine you preferred the 18" length of the Motorola brick phone with its antenna? Fractal mathematics in antenna design and placement, revolutionized mobile phone technology. But Apple doesn't need to develop revolutionary math... just revolutionary marketing (of other people's IP).
@croberts you dont have a clue do you? It is very very difficult to get a patent. You must beable to show that your idea, invention or whatever is new, it works, it does something useful that is remarkably different in process and design to anything else that has ever been patented before it. So no "Position determination for location" is not SDK for GPS (when was the last time your GPS transmitted video, text, voice data? NEVER.

Oh yea the touch tone phone already has a few hundred patents issued.
@croberts unlike the software patent apple is trolling, Nokia actually spend billions to develop hardware technology that every other company is paying them to use.

if you are just a blind apple fanboy, then say so first.
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These are trumped up lawsuits much like many of the ones brought against Microsoft a few years back. I'm guessing Nokia is going to lose this battle.
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Antenna design is a highly sophisticated discipline that requires heavy investment.

Why should Apple be allowed to get a free ride on Nokia's engineering excellence?
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Investment
becabill 7th May 2010
@OS Reload
Partially agreed, except that sometimes the simple and relatively cheap "eureka moment" should earn as much respect - and win a patent, although I'm sure this doesn't happen much now, probably, since the technology is so complex now - but antenna theory hasn't change much, is basically higher math.
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@Stellardyne Certainly someone can bring such lawsuits not based in fact but based in an effort to harm or destroy the competition. However such tactics can only be used by individuals or companies with extremely deep pockets.
You can also look at the companies involved to see what their history of using these tactics historically are.

Nokia has on the whole a very limited patent lawsuit filing history, because again they plan on making money by licensing their technology to others.

Apple on the other hand, well I dont even have to get into that. But Apples strength over the years has been in their software developement, not their hardware.

It will be interesting to see what happens here. My guess is that if Apple is anywhere near patent infringment on any of these claims they will settle out of court, after telling us all they did not do anything wrong. And the out of court settle will prevent anyone from ever telling us just how badly Apple has acted here. But we will see.
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This is a joke...
Carrion 7th May 2010
Why don't they stop using a bunch of nonsense double speak in their patents. Who could possibly tell is anyone is violating them? "Your phone has an antenna - we have half a dozen patents covering that." Hogwash. Let's see your products, Nokia. Show us where you use these patents. Otherwise, you're just a patent troll...
Not only did Jobs say that and, not only are all of their products based on stolen ideas, they literally (their words, not mine) look for unpatented ideas to use as their own.
Then, as Steve Jobs is prone to try and get a lot for no work, they patent the ideas they've stolen AND SUE the company they stole the ideas from....

If you don't believe this is true, just look at the HTC suit. Name one thing in that suit that Apple invented.

Plus it shows Apple doesn't have the brass to go after Google and MS, which is their obvious aim with the HTC lawsuit. Nope, they'll go after the smaller company that doesn't have a 10,000 patent portfolio, of ideas they didn't come up with. LOL
@xuniL_z So it's okay for Nokia to sue Apple but it's not okay for Apple to sue HTC?

Cue the double standards
  • Flagged
It is indeed ok for Nokia to sue Apple for stealing Nokia's patented, original inventions but it's not okay for Apple to sue HTC for using a pinch-to-zoom idea that Apple fraudulently patented 15 years after it was first published by somebody else.
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Apple's obvious aims
matthew_maurice 7th May 2010
@xuniL_z From the number of analysts that are so frequently wrong about Apple, I'd say their aims are hardly obvious. Or maybe I've missed the Verizon iPhone.
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A difficulty
becabill 7th May 2010
@xuniL_z
Iv'e discovered is that the patent agents are necessarily as astute as the need to be, and patents applications often differ only in terminology, therefore two applicants can wind up patenting what is essentially the same thing, with or without their knowledge. This problem will no doubt be mentioned in this suit.
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I don't understand how Apple's touch patents can be called fraudulent and 15 year-old technology, when nobody had done it with a capacitive display b4.

Microsoft's Surface (which Microsoft didn't invent, by the way) uses a projected display with object sensors involving triangulation--just one reason why that technology has no hope of being pocketable like an iPhone.
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@becabil
Rama.NET 9th May 2010
>>I don't understand how Apple's touch patents can be called fraudulent and 15 year-old technology, when nobody had done it with a capacitive display b4.

Google or Bing are your friends to prove it. The capacitive touch displays were there decade back and even pinch and zoom were researched. If you dig the internet you would find. Check it you would get astonished, http://marypcb.livejournal.com/393543.html
--Ram--
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@frankenstone

It is indeed ok for Nokia to sue Apple for stealing Nokia's patented, original inventions At this point we are not sure about that - sure Nokia says that Apple stole these but until it is proven it is innocent until proven guilty.

but it's not okay for Apple to sue HTC for using a pinch-to-zoom idea that Apple fraudulently patented 15 years after it was first published by somebody else.


And where exactly is the proof that someone else developed this tech 15 years ago? IF that was true why didn't they come forward when the original iPhone was released or why didn't they release a product using this tech 15 years ago or at least some time prior to the release of the iPhone? Until you can cough up some proof I call BS on that.
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Double Speak??
becabill 7th May 2010
@Carrion
What is double speak to one is wholly understandable language to the trained mind.
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Talk about patents
jamesagada 7th May 2010
I could sue Nokia for my patent on cell phone holding position for better recebption
Nokia's patents are real old fashioned engineering.

Nokia's patents are for real, why should Apple be allowed to get a free ride?
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You could?
becabill 7th May 2010
@jamesagada
You have a patent on that? Tried to license or sell it? You could retire stinkin' rich!
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I imagine someone has
pllamonica@... 7th May 2010
"Why don't they patent touch-tone dialing" Point is they have some patents, if in fact Apple used those "items" without paying for them then they sould file. That is why they got the patent. It is not a question of If they should have been allowed to take out the patent, they have it, if they have it they own the process.
Nokia's patents are for real old fashioned engineering, those patents have merit.

Why should Apple be allowed to get a free ride on them?
I have to wonder if Nokia would have added the iPad 3G to their lawsuits if the iPad had not done as well. And since there cannot be but so many ways to position and use a 3G antenna where are the lawsuits against the other manufacturers? Why is Apple being singled out by Nokia? Does Nokia consider Apple a threat?
@athynz The reason Apple are being singled out is presumably because the other manufacturers pay royalties to Nokia, or have cross licensing deals. If you've seen mobile phones from different manufacturers over the years, you'll remember Nokia phones not having a visible antenna at a a time when phones from other manufacturers had a dirty great big aerial sticking out of the top!
@athynz
Why is Apple being singled out by Nokia? Does Nokia consider Apple a threat?

Because Nokia wanted to charge Apple 10 times what it charges other makers and gain unlimited access to all of Apple?s patents. Basically Nokia was trying to get a free ride on Apple?s IP, while charging an exorbitant amount for their patents. When the ITC first said Apple did not infringe, so they would not prevent Apple from selling their entire product lines, Nokia files again in an attempt to slow down the adoption rate of Apple products. I wonder who really has something to gain by this?
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Good job Nokia
saif365 7th May 2010
This is great. hopefully Nokia gets what they want. Let justice be done. Apple should be sued for billions. :P i hope this is enough to put off apple fanboys
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Keep dreaming
matthew_maurice 7th May 2010
@saif365 Fanboys, Apple or otherwise, are never put off, that's why they're called fanboys!
Nokia is right in not letting Apple get a free ride on Nokia's hard work.
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What about a product?
frankz00 7th May 2010
Geez... as smart as Nokia claims to be for "inventing" this stuff, you'd think they'd actually put out a product. Go figure...
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Their lead is so wide that you'd think even intellectual midgets such as yourself would actually take notice. Go figure...
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They have lots of them.
LYU370 7th May 2010
@frankz00 Or haven't you heard that Nokia is the largest cell phone manufacturer in the world?
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leader
banned from zdnet 10th May 2010
@ajezierski
sure, they sell loads of plastic crap at $50 a pop in the third world. even their smartphones sell for a third of apple's price. ($200 asp vs. $600 asp). large as in millions of cheap units, not large in quality, innovation, design, hardware or software. go figure.
  • Flagged
Great!!! thanks for sharing this information to us!
seslisohbet seslichat

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