Posts Tagged: "nokia"

On October 12, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) issued two related precedential opinions affirming the decisions of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, holding that neither Verizon Wireless and Sprint Communications nor Nokia Solutions infringed Traxcell Technologies LLC’s patents. raxcell sued Verizon and Sprint for infringing four of its patents, all of which share a specification and a 2001 priority date. The four patents are U.S. Patent Nos. 8,977,284 (the ‘284 patent), 9,5,10,320 (the ‘320 patent), 9,642,024 (the ‘024 patent), and 9,549,388 (the ‘388 patent). In a separate suit, Traxcell sued Nokia for infringing the ‘284, the ‘320, and the ‘024 patents.

The claims of three of the four patents at issue—the ‘284, 320, and ‘024 patents (collectively the SON patents)—are related to self-optimizing network (SON) technology for making “corrective actions” to improve communications between a wireless device and a network.

Two cases pending at the EU Court of Justice (CJEU) address, respectively, questions on the licensing of standard essential patents (SEPs), and the availability of interim measures in litigation. With the hearings expected later this year, IPWatchdog looks at the key issues raised. It is relatively rare for patent cases to come before the CJEU, as there are no EU Directives or Regulations directly governing patents. However, the Court does hear patent cases when they also involve other aspects of EU law, such as Article 102 TFEU, concerning abuse of a dominant position; the Enforcement Directive; and the Biotechnology Directive. In the past few months, the German courts have referred questions in two important patent cases.

Here we go again! Another day, another ridiculous attack on the U.S. patent system. This time the attack comes from the R Street Institute, who claims that patents are too strong and are inhibiting American companies from achieving success in the race for leadership in the 5G marketplace and continued leadership in Artificial Intelligence (AI). R Street will hold a panel discussion on their wildly outlandish theory, for which they can’t possibly have any factual support, on Tuesday, October 15, in the Capitol Visitor Center. In the announcement they claim that patents are inhibiting American companies because Chinese telecommunications company, Huawei, asserted more than 200 patents against Verizon Communications earlier this year. Therefore—and ipso facto—patents are too strong and American companies are suffering. There may be legitimate security concerns around Huawei’s infrastructure, but to suggest that the company’s patents are at the root of these threats is in a word—Absurd!

Nokia Corporation announced it entered into a patent licensing agreement with Chinese mobile consumer electronics firm OPPO. Although terms of the deal weren’t disclosed by Nokia, the company did state that under the agreement, OPPO would make payments over a multi-year period… OPPO may not receive the same kind of attention that its domestic rivals Xiaomi and Huawei receive, but it has become a major competitor in the Chinese smartphone market in recent years. OPPO had the greatest market share of smartphone makers in terms of Chinese sales during 2016 when the company shipped 78.4 million units to achieve a 16.8 percent market share within the country.

“Increasing numbers of US operating companies dislike patent protection,” Ding explained to IAM. “[T]he production and manufacture of products are increasingly located in Asia and Asian companies have more and more patents… opportunities are being transferred to the East just like manufacturing was.” * * * Although strong patent licensing activities are surely welcome news to Huawei and the many people employed by that firm, stakeholders in the U.S. patent system likely can’t help but see this as a further harbinger that China’s innovation economy will overtake ours in the coming years.

Raytheon, Nokia and Ericsson all filed briefs with the Federal Circuit encouraging the court to decline the Cray mandamus on a motion to transfer from EDTX… Cray is asking the Federal Circuit to decide two issues: did the Eastern Texas court err in holding that a “regular and established place of business” need not be a physical presence; and did the district court err in determining that the residence of a single work-from-home employee constitutes a “regular and established place of business” of his employer.

Finnish telecom firm Nokia (NYSE:NOK) and Chinese mobile handset developer Xiaomi recently issued a joint press release announcing a multi-year patent cross license agreement granting both companies access to standard essential patents (SEPs) owned by either firm in the cellular space. In addition, Xiaomi bought patents from Nokia outright. Details on financials and the patents involved were not included in the press announcement.

Being targeted by PAEs is nothing new for Apple — but in an anti-trust complaint dated December 20, 2016, Apple finally said enough was enough. Pulling no punches, Apple accused the PAEs of “conspiring with Nokia in a scheme to diffuse and abuse [standard essential patents] and, as the PAEs and Nokia fully intended, monetize those false promises by extracting exorbitant non-FRAND royalties in way Nokia could not”. Using PAEs for direct attacks against Apple would be a smart, albeit sneaky, strategy for Nokia. Since PAEs do not themselves sell any products, there would be little risk of a countersuit from Apple – as well as a general lack of commitment to FRAND licensing terms that spell lower royalties.

On Thursday, December 15th, Dish Network (NASDAQ:DISH) subsidiary and over-the-top (OTT) television delivery service Sling TV unveiled a new cloud-based digital video recording (DVR) technology. Customers using Sling to access live television programming can store up to 100 hours of content including full-length movies, single episodes and entire television series. Automatic deletion of oldest-watched content and simultaneous recording options are also included with the service. Sling’s cloud DVR service appears to only be available to customers accessing Sling through Roku devices in this first rollout of the program and the DVR service only works with certain channels.

5G is expected to generate even higher revenues from applications and services due to explosion on mobile application and services because of broadband-like speed, which are crucial for some of the emerging technologies like IoT, Wearables and Virtual/Augmented Reality. Revenues for 5G services will exceed $65 billion by 2025, according to a forecast from Juniper Research… The number of patents and key underlying technologies for 5G mobile networks will evolve significantly within next 5 years. However, early analysis shows that Qualcomm will still be the IP leader but may be not as dominant as in 4G-LTE. The device makers like Apple, Samsung, and Lenovo are also working on 5G IP development in order to minimize IP licensing costs.

The two largest patent portfolios related to BLE technologies are owned by Irvine, CA-based fabless semiconductor company Broadcom and South Korean electronics giant Samsung. A market map view of the top innovators in the BLE space shows that not only does Broadcom have a slightly larger portfolio than Samsung, it has also dealt with far less litigation than the South Korean developer. The large collection of companies clustering in the lower-left quadrant of this market map represent companies with smaller patent portfolios and lower revenues. The dozens of companies dotting this portion of the map could be an indication that mergers and acquisitions in the IoT semiconductor chip space may be far from over this year.