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Comment by jacquesm | Hacker News Reader

Ok, I just bought my last nokia phone.

Screw them and the horse they rode in on, this is just a bid of weakness. If you can't compete with your product line in fair ways then you should revamp your product line, not turn to your lawyers.

What a bunch of losers.

I've been using Nokia phones for the last decade, with a two week 'diversion' to Samsung (talk about bad firmware). Nokia has an 'ok' product but it could be a whole lot better, I'm as loyal as can be but software patents are a bad thing and using them like this is just plain dumb.

Bye Bye Nokia, you once were an outstanding company.

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If Nokia has innovated in the mobile communication area, why would it be wrong for them to use their intellectual property rights.

A separate question is if intellectual property is a good idea at all. But that is beyond the question at hand.

Patent trolls are just a bad idea, but in this case Nokia may have created a foundation that the Apple is building upon. Companies pay for licensing technology all the time. USB, Firewire, Bluetooth, ...

Eh. Apple has continually played the patent game to the detriment of others. I don't feel any particular animosity towards Nokia for playing the same game with Apple. With any luck, this will be another example of why our patent system is flawed and needs to be revamped.

That's may be true.

But that does not give nokia a free pass to do this either.

When has Apple sued another company for patent infringement (not including countersuits)?

"Apple Inc. v. Atico International USA Inc. et al" looks like it would fit the bill (see http://news.justia.com/cases/featured/delaware/dedce/1:2008c... )

Apple has continually played the patent game to the detriment of others.

Such as when?

The main example on my mind was iPhone patents and how Palm had to tread carefully around them in order to make the Pre:

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090121/1932143481.shtml

However, I'd be surprised if other examples didn't exist.

Note: When I said Apple "played the patent game" I wasn't specifically referring to filed lawsuits. The threat of a lawsuit is often enough.

Palm had to tread carefully around them in order to make the Pre

Only in the sense that an author has to "tread carefully" around ripping off another author's work. Clearly Apple's patents did not prevent the Pre or Android or any number of other devices from making it to market without apparent functional omissions. What exactly is the problem?

The threat of a lawsuit is often enough.

Enough for what? To prevent someone from violating your rights under law? Well, yeah. That's the way a lot of things work. Holding a patent does not strike me as inherently reprehensible.

Are they software patents? It's not clear from the press release.

"The ten patents in suit relate to technologies fundamental to making devices which are compatible with one or more of the GSM, UMTS (3G WCDMA) and wireless LAN standards. The patents cover wireless data, speech coding, security and encryption and are infringed by all Apple iPhone models shipped since the iPhone was introduced in 2007"

Pretty clear to me. Encoding, data, security and encryption are all software issues, not hardware issues.

Actually all of those can be done at the hardware level, but I'm pretty sure that aint the way Apple is doing it, so yeah has to be software.

Software patents don't specifically patent software. They patent a machine implementation of an idea. The hardware you speak of needs some kind of control logic anyway. So it's covered either way.

I loved early nokia phones, but they seriously can't compete with the iPhone. The nokia N800 etc sounded great but are pretty disappointing.

What a sad thing for them to resort to.

N900 could be interesting in this regard.

Most of my disappointment with the N800 was in the operating system and UI. There was absolutely no support either. I don't think it even came with a manual. It looked like it had been cobbled together rather than lovingly thought out.

maemo looked interesting, but even the firmware update method was archaic and extremely over complex. From what I remember it only worked if you unplugged the usb cable and plugged it in at exactly the right point or something! (swear to god, this was in the README).

Maybe it's all changed now though.

N900 is interesting in that it is both a tablet PC (or whatever term fits best) and a phone. One less device to carry.

I do not know re. if the UI experience has changed. I can see how N-series tablets can appeal to hackers who like to modify the software that is running on their device. From this POV having a full-fledged Linux on a mobile device is a plus. But N710/N800 was indeed less slick in terms of the user experience than Apple's devices.

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