Summary: The prevailing problem which is companies with mountains of patents going after OEMs, using a bulk of infringement accusations, and demanding 'protection' money

IN the US, Qualcomm has just made a move to stop Apple, which already stopped paying Qualcomm and is leading somewhat of a rebellion against Qualcomm (under trouble in multiple continents).

In Korea, Qualcomm is in troubled waters too. Korean companies like Samsung are also affected, so the actions against Qualcomm are bipartisan from the iOS/Android perspective. Qualcomm upsets everyone.

Days ago, according to this, "Apple had a deadline for responding to Samsung's mid-March petition for writ of certiorari" (request for Supreme Court review) in the second California Apple v. Samsung case, which had received very significant support from software and Internet companies, non-governmental organizations and law professors."

Apple's patent war on Samsung seems to have become a distraction as meanwhile, in the past few years, Huawei became the largest Android OEM. That used to be Nokia, which is now preoccupied with patents and has just settled with Apple again. The Finnish media wrote that "Nokia and Apple settle intellectual property {sic} lawsuits, become partners" (they mean patents). It happened just a few days ago:

Finnish communications giant Nokia and US tech behemoth Apple announced on Tuesday that they have settled all of their litigation and signed a patent license and a business cooperation agreement.

As noted here, "Apple and Nokia announced a settlement today after only about 5 months of litigation. Apple v. Samsung has been going for more than 6 yrs..."

What a waste of time and energy. Only lawyers profit from these battles.

As noted in this article, we don't know who pays and how much, but we can only guess that Nokia is paid by Apple, for it has more patents in this area and reports were always suggestive of a demand from Nokia (for a number of years):

The companies said today they have settled all outstanding litigation and agreed to a patent license. While exact financial terms are confidential, Apple will be making an up-front cash payment to Nokia, followed by additional payments over the course of the agreement.

Microsoft has already spread Nokia's patents to patent trolls, scattering these in a way that harms Android. It's problematic for many reasons and we mostly care about the effect on GNU/Linux. ⬆