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Comment by ryanjmo | Hacker News Reader

Another knee-jerk reaction is thinking that companies must have looked at the patent and copied it, if they infringed on it. Most likely Apple never considered those patents.

I would imagine that the iPhone still would have been built and would have been nearly as good, even if those patents did not exist.

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There is a difference between a willful patent infringement and an un-willful (not sure what the real term is) patent infringement. Both are patent infringements, and both carry penalties etc., however a willful patent infringement carrier a much higher penalty. So, even if Apple didn't know about it, it could still be infringing on Nokia's patents. This is exactly the reason why patent attorneys constantly tell folks in the R&D to never go look or read other's patents, so that if they are ever sued in the future, they can at least claim that it was not a willful infringement.

That's a great way of figuring out how the law is broken."Un-willful" patent infringement shouldn't be stopped. If a patent is likely to be violated without intention, that really means that the (social good) justification for the patent isn't very strong. The only reason it is even illegal is to stop companies from being willfully ignorant but still take advantage of the idea's prior existence.

Most likely Apple never considered those patents.

Except that the actual complaint states that Nokia offered to license Apple the patents and Apple declined multiple times.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/21458614/Nokia-vs-Apple-Complaint

Yes, but he means "Apple never considered those patents at the the time of developing the iPhone" therefore meeting his definition of "un-wilfull".

This is also possibly a reason why Nokia have waited to sue - they have been spending the time trying to get Apple to license them out of court.

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