Nokia, Qualcomm seek common ground in legal fights
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Nokia  and Qualcomm   agreed to look for ways in which a U.S. court in  Delaware could solve some wider, international issues in the  major legal battle between the two technology heavyweights.
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(InfoWorld) - Nokia Corp.'s patent licensing deal with Trimble Navigation Ltd. this week could give the phone maker an important boost in an ongoing dispute with CDMA developer Qualcomm Inc. The dealÂ gives Nokia a license for 700 Trimble technologies for delivering location-based services, as well as exclusive rights to sublicense them to other companies in the wireless industry. That means any company that wants to license Trimble's patents must now do so through Nokia. Nokia officials stopped short of calling the deal just what it needs to end itsÂ acrimonious renegotiation talks with Qualcomm. But they acknowledged that it will strengthen Nokia's hand in licensing talks with all wireless companies that include GPS (Global Positioning Systems) capabilities in their products. "It will improve our negotiating position," said Ulla James, director of intellectual property rights strategic marketing for Nokia. Trimble has one of the biggest portfolios of patents for location-based technologies, and any company that offers such capabilities will now need to talk to Nokia, she said. Qualcomm integrates GPS capabilities in many of its chipsets, including its gpsOne product. The company has shipped tens of millions of such chipsets in the past few years, said Nitesh Patel, a senior analyst at Strategy Analytics Inc. "Given that Nokia can sublicense to whoever it wants to and on whatever terms it wishes to, it has a strong bargaining position with Qualcomm with respect to GPS," Patel wrote in an e-mail. He cautioned that Qualcomm might already have a long-term contract with Trimble that could supersede the arrangement between Nokia and Trimble. Qualcomm declined requests for comment, and Nokia would not discuss how the deal might affect its negotiations with Qualcomm specifically. Nokia and Qualcomm are engaged in a bitter renegotiation of a patent licensing agreement that ends in April 2007. The companies license a variety of patents from each other relating to mobile phone standards. Qualcomm is well-known for developing the CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) standard and Nokia patents contribute to the WCDMA (Wideband CDMA) and other standards. Qualcomm has launched several lawsuits against Nokia for alleged patent infringement and Nokia, along with five other mobile vendors, has filed an anticompetitive complaint against Qualcomm with the European Commission. Nokia played down the significance of the April deadline. If the two sides don't reach agreement by then, they will both be able to continue selling their respective products in any case, James said. It is "normal practice" for two companies in a renegotiation process to continue selling products even if the contract expires, with an eye to settling payments once a new contract is agreed to, she said. Nevertheless, a stronger patent portfolio of its own could only help Nokia in its negotiations. In some of its lawsuits against Nokia, Qualcomm has asked the court to pay for Nokia's alleged patent infringement on phones that it has already sold. Nokia's agreement with Trimble marks a new way of thinking at the Finnish handset maker, which now views intellectual property more as an investment, said James. That's a turnaround from the 1980s, when the company didn't believe in the long-term value of patents and advised companies not to apply for them, James said. Today, Nokia contributes 25 percent of the patents that make up the GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) standard and 28 percent of WCDMA patents, James said. It also holds 130 essential patents for CDMA. Despite announcing an exit from the CDMA market, Nokia intends to hold onto those patents as a revenue generator, she said. Nokia also believes that it has around 25 percent of essential patents for WiMax, the emerging broadband wireless standard. Qualcomm recently beganÂ asking WiMax vendors to license patents relevant to WiMax that it acquired when it bought Flarion Technologies Inc. last year. Â  James Niccolai in Paris contributed to this report. Â
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An International Trade Commission judge handed Qualcomm a minor victory in the company's long-running tussle with Nokia on Monday, ruling that the patent-infringement investigation brought by the Finnish company be concluded.
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Qualcomm  Chief Executive Paul Jacobs said on Thursday that talks with Nokia  on renewing a technology license may be helped by AT&T Inc.'s  decision to use Qualcomm's mobile television technology.
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A judge recommended to stop the investigation based on Nokia?s complaint that could have prevented some Qualcomm chips from being imported into the U.S.
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Qualcomm scored a minor victory in its continuing spat with Nokia when a judge last week recommended ending&#160;the investigation Nokia brought&#160;against it in August for infringing patents.In August, Nokia asked the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) to&#160;ban the import of Qualcomm chip sets&#160;used in cell phones, including 3G (third-generation handsets), for allegedly infringing on five patents held by Nokia.ITC Administrative Law Judge Paul Luckern granted Qualcomm a motion to terminate the investigation, as the companies are already in arbitration to settle a dispute behind a technology license the two companies signed earlier. If the decision stands after a 30-day review, Qualcomm won&#39;t be prevented from importing its chip sets into the U.S.Nokia originally requested ITC to initiate an investigation against Qualcomm for infringing patents and issue an exclusion order to bar the import of infringing Qualcomm chip sets into the U.S.For two years now, the spat between the two companies over patent licensing has led to several lawsuits.Last year,&#160;Qualcomm filed a complaint with the ITC against Nokia over GSM&#160;(Global System for Mobile Communication) patents.The ITC is already investigating Nokia after&#160;InterDigital complained that Nokia infringed&#160;two of its 3G wireless technology patents. The commission also&#160;banned some Qualcomm imports&#160;in June, after&#160;complaints from Broadcom for patent infringement.
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And Motorola deal Comment On a financial analyst tour in the UK last week, Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs lamented that, on a day when the chipmaker made a string of major announcements, the commentators were only interested in asking about the licensing disputes with Nokia.â¦
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Nokia and Microsoft, which have a history as rivals, have decided to work together when it comes to mobile music.
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InfoWorld - Ongoing legal disputes over mobile phone patents between Nokia and Qualcomm are consuming much executive management time, generating substantial lawyer fees, and, if they escalate, could affect handset development and prices, experts warn.
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Nokia Corp., the world's largest mobile phone maker, took legal action earlier this week against two European manufacturers for allegedly infringing on technology patents and registered designs.
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Last week, as we reported, Qualcomm's request for a stay of injunction against the sale of certain of its chips in the US was denied, and that denial was upheld by the International Trade Commission. This after the company was found to have infringed upon three Broadcom patents. At that time, Broadcom said it was open to seeking a negotiated settlement with Broadcom.
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Nokia  said on Tuesday the  United States International Trade Commission has ordered a stay  of Qualcomm's  suit against Nokia.
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The U.S. International  Trade Commission on Monday opened a hearing in a case in which  U.S. chip maker Qualcomm Inc  accused Nokia (NOK1V.HE)  of infringing some of its patents in cellphones using the GSM  technology.
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Nokia , the world's biggest mobile phone maker, said on Tuesday the ongoing patent battle with Qualcomm Inc.  may work against the uptake of "third-generation" mobile technology.
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A federal judge took action against Qualcomm and six of its outside attorneys on Monday for hiding 46,000 documents in a lawsuit the company filed -- and lost -- against rival Broadcom.Qualcomm sued Broadcom in 2005 alleging violation of two of its patents on video compression technology. The case was one of a string of patent fights between the Southern California communications chip companies, in which&#160;Qualcomm has often come out the loser.Magistrate Judge Barbara Major of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California, in San Diego, called Qualcomm&#39;s actions a &quot;monumental and intentional discovery violation.&quot; She referred the attorneys to the State Bar of California for investigation of possible ethics violations and ordered Qualcomm to review its procedures and come up with a plan for collecting evidence in future court cases. She also ordered Qualcomm to pay Broadcom about $8.6 million but said that sum will be reduced by the amount Qualcomm is already paying in damages in the case.&quot;Qualcomm intentionally withheld tens of thousands of decisive documents from its opponent in an effort to win this case and gain a strategic business advantage over Broadcom,&quot; Major wrote in her decision.Part of Broadcom&#39;s defense involved Qualcomm&#39;s involvement in a group that developed the H.264 video compression standard. Qualcomm argued it was not involved in that group, called the Joint Video Team. But the trial revealed that there were e-mail messages and other documents that linked Qualcomm to the group, Major wrote. Although Qualcomm&#39;s attorneys did find documents that supported or didn&#39;t hurt its own side in the case, they didn&#39;t find this evidence that hurt its argument, she wrote. The lawyers &quot;used the lack of evidence to repeatedly and forcefully make false statements and arguments to the court and jury,&quot; Major wrote.Qualcomm has never produced any evidence to explain or justify its not producing the documents, the ruling said.&quot;Qualcomm regrets the discovery errors that occurred in this case. However, as we pointed out in our brief to the appellate court, when Qualcomm discovered additional documents after the trial, it produced them and apologized to the court and Broadcom for the errors. These actions defy any suggestion that Qualcomm engaged in intentional misconduct. We are considering our options, including further appeal,&quot; Qualcomm said in a prepared statement.Last October, after Broadcom sought sanctions against it for the violations, Qualcomm argued that&#160;it had failed to produce the documents because its legal team was disjointed&#160;and engineers at the company didn&#39;t understand technical standards-setting procedures.
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(InfoWorld) - Nokia and Qualcomm have entered a new round in their high-stakes fight over patent royalties, with the Finnish handset maker landing its first counter-punch. The Finnish company has responded to theÂ patent infringement lawsuit filed by QualcommÂ in the Western District of Wisconsin on April 2 by claiming that its products aren't infringing, and filing its first patent counter-suit against the U.S. chip company, Nokia said Thursday. Nokia's suit seeks damages and also an injunction against certain of Qualcomm's chip sets. "We're confident that our products don't infringe the two Qualcomm patents that are in suit and, in fact, we believe these patents are invalid," a Nokia spokeswoman said. The initial lawsuit filed by Qualcomm in Wisconsin concerns two patents covering speech encoders used in certain GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) mobile phones to digitize audio signals for transmission. In its counter-suit,Â Nokia accuses Qualcomm of infringingÂ six of its patents, relating primarily to multiband and multimode technologies that reduce handset and chip set size, cost, and power consumption. Standards bodies divide patents touching on the technologies they define into two categories: those essential to a standards-compliant product, and those that only cover a particular implementation of the standard. The six patents Nokia accuses Qualcomm of infringing are implementation patents, the spokeswoman said. Companies with essential patents included in a standard agree to license the technology under fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory terms, but the companies can decide whether or not to license implementation patents to others, she said. Qualcomm had no agreement to use the six Nokia implementation patents, she said. Qualcomm has copied these innovations and made them available to its chip set customers, according to the Nokia spokeswoman. In April, Qualcomm filed another lawsuit against Nokia in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas. The separate lawsuit deals with three patents related to the downloading of applications and other digital content over GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) or EDGE (Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution) networks, two technologies for speeding the transmission of packet data in GSM networks. The Nokia spokeswoman declined to comment on the Texas lawsuit. Over the past 19 months, Qualcomm has filed 11 patent litigation cases against Nokia but in none of these cases has the company had any success, according to the spokeswoman. Legal disputes over mobile phone patents have grown in recent years, largely because of opportunities to generate significant revenue from licensing inventions to others. Numerous patent licensing disputes have accompanied mobile phone technologies such as GSM and WCDMA (Wideband Code Division Multiple Access), and are expected to flow from 4G (fourth-generation) systems now under development. In a interviewÂ earlier this month, Bill Davidson, senior vice president of investor relations and international marketing at Qualcomm, said the company has more than 1,000 essential patents for OFDM, OFDMA (OFDM Access) and MIMO (Multiple Input Multiple Output) technologies, all of which form the foundation of new 4G technologies, whether WiMax, LTE (Long-Term Evolution) or UMB (Ultra Mobile Broadband). Â
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Nokia (NOK1V.HE), the world's biggest  mobile phone maker, said on Tuesday the United States  International Trade Commission (ITC) has ordered a stay of  wireless chip supplier Qualcomm's  suit against Nokia.