Google has just not had much luck lately in the patent courtrooms.
It turns out that the tethering feature on an android violated a Nokia patent that is more than 10 years old. "Tethering" is when you use a smartphone's cellular internet connection to create a wifi hotspot for a laptop or other internet-capable device, enabling it to browse the web through your phone's data connection. It's kind of mind-boggling for me that Nokia came up with an idea like this in 1995, when the internet itself had still not entered common knowledge.
Here is the article in question:
http://www.fosspatents.com/2013/03/android-likely-infringes-nokia-patent.html
Of course, in 1995 they probably didn't imagine that their patent would be used for tethering (they probably thought talking voices would go through the computer or something). Also, in their picture the phone is connected to the computer through a wire; maybe they thought that cell phones would be our main source of wireless internet? But regardless, here we are today with a patent violation.
It is interesting to think that although Nokia has declined a little in terms of market share, its patents from back when it was the top dog are still proving useful and generating revenue today. I wonder what cool patents are being invented today that won't come to fruition for another decade.
Whoa! That is really interesting news. The main reason I am so surprised by this is that there are many patents that are made years ago which is considered very innovative for it's time. This innovative-ness of Nokia is surprising since it has not really done much in the last few years.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Vineet. The only problem is now that Nokia will literally have to be a patent troll if they are not innovating quickly enough. Tethering was a pretty big step in the last part of the previous decade so who knows.
ReplyDeleteI think you make a great point at the end about patents that come out today and their usefulness in the future. I believe this adds another incentive for people to patent whatever they can, because just as Nokia shows, who knows what will be infringed in years to come from new companies on past patents.
ReplyDeleteNokia is finally climbing back on the ladder by bringing out the patents of its peak time. What's interesting is many of the concepts that were patented or thought of a decade ago had a central concept that could be utilized in mobile devices. Nokia never made it to the top of the mobile market, but its patented concepts did.
ReplyDeleteThis highlights the point that patents may not be put to use immediately, but are rather more like investments for tech companies which may pay off for them in the future.
ReplyDelete