Bonum Certa Men Certa

Why Nokia Sued Apple First (or Why Apple is Possibly the 'Bad Guy')

Nokia logo with Apple



Summary: Another angle on the Apple vs Nokia case

WE all know that Apple sued Linux/Android without any prior provocation from the side of Linux/Android. It makes Apple a patent aggressor, but some people cite Nokia as an example of Apple being the victim of a Linux-supporting company [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]. In our third IRC channel (#boycottnovell-social) we have just discussed the point which came to us via Identi.ca [1, 2] (language warning, as it's IRC and microblogging).



To make a long story short, Oiaohm insisted that it was Apple's fault as it started to provoke Linux-based products (such as Palm's WebOS) using patents. He explained that Nokia's action was defensive in a proactive sense. Partial log is below.






Techrights logo

IRC: #boycottnovell-social @ FreeNode: June 4th, 2010

schestowitz"although nokia has been fairly good to free software, when they pull bullshit like that they deserve to be called out [..] hey where was all the stories about nokia when they brought all the litigation with apple for bullshit patents?" @eeefak I wrote about that a lot and denounced Nokia since 2008 http://www.google.com/search?q=site:techrights.org+apple+nokia&sourceid=navclient-ff&rlz=1B5GGGL_enGB315GB316&ie=UTF-8&hl=Jun 04 09:51
phIRCe-localTitle: site:techrights.org apple nokia - Google Search .::. Size~: 35.96 KBJun 04 09:51
oiaohmSome peopleJun 04 10:24
oiaohmApple started itJun 04 10:24
oiaohmNever mess with nokiaJun 04 10:24
oiaohmNokia is truly one of the most friendly companies out there.  If nokia used all the patents they had they could have 100 percent of the market.Jun 04 10:25
schestowitzApple started it?Jun 04 10:26
schestowitzI think Nokia didJun 04 10:26
oiaohmApple started it.Jun 04 10:34
oiaohmTrying to apply font patents on NokiaJun 04 10:34
oiaohmSometimes you should leave well enough alone.Jun 04 10:34
schestowitzI see..Jun 04 10:35
oiaohmIe apple poked nokia with small stick.Jun 04 10:36
oiaohmNokia pulled out huge cub and procedded to beat them into the ground.Jun 04 10:36
oiaohmNokia is fine as long as you are not dumb enough to poke them.Jun 04 10:37
schestowitzAny link on that?Jun 04 10:37
schestowitzI thought Nokia had struck firstJun 04 10:37
oiaohmIe apple saber rattled.Jun 04 10:38
oiaohmI did have the link.Jun 04 10:38
oiaohmIt was over there iphone they made a statement and nokia kinda exploded.Jun 04 10:38
oiaohmBasically nokia believe in pemetive strick if they get wind of you planing to hit them.Jun 04 10:40
schestowitzShow it to me, plsJun 04 10:40
schestowitzit's /very/ importantJun 04 10:40
schestowitzI accused Nokia is being the first to strikeJun 04 10:40
schestowitzI'd love to show Apple started itJun 04 10:41
oiaohmI know what the tech was about trying to get google to play ball.Jun 04 10:43
schestowitzLet me know if you find thisJun 04 10:47
schestowitzYou're usually right about this stuffJun 04 10:47
schestowitzBut I ought to at least show evidence from Apple/NokiaJun 04 10:47
oiaohmIts two things.Jun 04 10:50
oiaohmMulti-touch and fonts.  schestowitzJun 04 10:50
oiaohmApple was saber rattling about multi-touch attacked quite a few companies.  Nokia needs multi-touch to stay competitive.Jun 04 10:51
oiaohmNokia has a lot of core patents.   Basically hit Apple hard get a good patent deal.Jun 04 10:51
schestowitzBut did Apple threaten Nokia?Jun 04 10:52
MinceRfor yourself, that isJun 04 10:52
MinceRcrApple needs to be hit harder so they won't oppress the industry any moreJun 04 10:52
oiaohmNokia don't have to threat them before they will hit you.Jun 04 10:54
oiaohmIf you place your self as a tech road block.Jun 04 10:54
oiaohmThey will steam roll you.Jun 04 10:54
oiaohmBasically apple threating other companies over multi-touch basically put themselves in nokia target to be neturalised before they can attack nokia.Jun 04 10:55
oiaohmBe a nice company and nokia is nice to you.Jun 04 10:55
oiaohmbe a asshole company hope nokia has nothing on you.Jun 04 10:55
MinceRand what has Xiph done against Nokia, then?Jun 04 10:57
oiaohmhttp://industry.bnet.com/technology/10004789/apple-multi-touch-patent-on-shaky-ground/  And this is the bit that tops it all.Jun 04 10:57
phIRCe-localTitle: Apple Multi-Touch Patent on Shaky Ground | BNET Technology Blog | BNET .::. Size~: 57.85 KBJun 04 10:57
oiaohmApples patent might be completely worthless.Jun 04 10:57
MinceRdon't forget Nokia's attack on HTML5.Jun 04 10:58
oiaohmDefine attack.Jun 04 10:59
oiaohmLot of stuff against Xiph nokia showed was stuff they had licenced from other companies not there own stuff.Jun 04 10:59
oiaohmAlso hardware decoders are more power effective ie longer battery live.Jun 04 11:00
schestowitzhttp://blog.wolfire.com/2010/06/Aquaria-goes-open-sourceJun 04 11:00
phIRCe-localTitle: Aquaria goes open source! - Wolfire Games Blog .::. Size~: 20.09 KBJun 04 11:00
MinceRNokia along with crApple made sure that HTML5 has no default recommendation for codecsJun 04 11:00
MinceRwhen it could have been Theora/Vorbis.Jun 04 11:00
MinceRthat was an asshole moveJun 04 11:01
MinceRit was said that Nokia did it so they could force DRM-encrusted shit the throats of users.Jun 04 11:01
oiaohmYep Nokia was on of the first to support VP8Jun 04 11:01
MinceRs/hit/hit down/Jun 04 11:01
MinceRthere was no VP8 back then.Jun 04 11:01
schestowitzMaybe it would not have been necessaryJun 04 11:02
oiaohmNokia was also the first to call google to release vp8Jun 04 11:02
schestowitzYouTUbe could use OggJun 04 11:02
schestowitzGoogle bought a company insteadJun 04 11:02
oiaohmTo solve issue MinceRJun 04 11:02
MinceRit was a nonissueJun 04 11:02
schestowitzNokia support Microsoft's Silver LieJun 04 11:03
schestowitzSince early 2008Jun 04 11:03
oiaohmThere are a few issue with TheoraJun 04 11:03
MinceRalso, don't forget Nokia's whining about how the FLOSS community should just do what Nokia wants and help them put DRM everywhere.Jun 04 11:03
schestowitzAri's rantJun 04 11:03
MinceRwhat issues? slightly less efficient than the holy H.264?Jun 04 11:03
oiaohmVorbis you can build hardware decoders for quite well.Jun 04 11:03
oiaohmH264 the same.Jun 04 11:03
schestowitzLinux users "need some education"Jun 04 11:03
MinceRor perhaps VC-1? (lol)Jun 04 11:03
oiaohmTheora has issues when you try to turn it into power effective circuit.Jun 04 11:04
oiaohmVC-1 is worse than Theora in a circuit.Jun 04 11:04
MinceRso what do you recommend? i'd recommend using a CPU.Jun 04 11:04
oiaohmDecated cirucit does not take as much power and lets the cpu run slow and pull less power.Jun 04 11:05
oiaohmRemember lot of Nokia devices are about days of battery life.Jun 04 11:05
[...]
oiaohmhttp://mashable.com/2009/01/26/apple-multi-touch-patent/  << the nokia attack on apple would have started from here.  schestowitzJun 04 11:15
phIRCe-localTitle: Apple Gets Their Multi-Touch Patent; Is Palm Screwed? .::. Size~: 89.79 KBJun 04 11:15
oiaohmA quite open patent attack against Palm over multitouch that nokia will need to implement to complete against iphone.Jun 04 11:16
oiaohmDon't go rattling sabbers sometimes you wake up a monster who is in on mood in talking.Jun 04 11:17
oiaohmhttp://www.macrumors.com/2009/01/22/tim-cook-apple-will-aggressively-protect-iphone-intellectual-property/  And these rumors would have made Nokia think offence is better than waiting around.Jun 04 11:20
phIRCe-localTitle: Tim Cook: Apple Will Aggressively Protect iPhone Intellectual Property - Mac Rumors .::. Size~: 18.34 KBJun 04 11:20
oiaohmYep don't rumor that you are going to Aggressively protect tech then be infringing on stuff.Jun 04 11:21
oiaohmI guess schestowitz is afkJun 04 11:21
[...]
oiaohmCan you see the start point now.  schestowitzJun 04 11:31
oiaohmIe apple says they going to protect the tech in the iphone.Jun 04 11:31
oiaohmNokia gets upset.Jun 04 11:31
schestowitzYes, I read thatJun 04 11:40
schestowitzI was gonna do a post about itJun 04 11:40

Recent Techrights' Posts

"systemd is essentially a corporate IBM/Redhat project and corporations of course will comply"
Microsoft and IBM care about users' freedom like Cheeto Lump cares about the US Constitution
Gemini Links 20/03/2026: Digital Identity Bifurcation and a "Return to Gemini"
Links for the day
 
Gemini Links 20/03/2026: Depictions of Culture and The Social Smolnet
Links for the day
SimilarWeb Was Never a Reliable Yardstick for Traffic
5RB may need some "house-cleaning"
Strangulation, suffocation, Jonathan Carter & Debian toxic culture confirmed
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Reports or Hearsay Suggest Ogilvy Broke Up With IBM and Insiders Report Mass Layoffs in "Infrastructure" (Might Impact Red Hat Entrants)
hearsay in Social Control Media
Scheduled Server Maintenance Tomorrow Night
Starting 9PM
None of the Above (NotA) & Debian snubbing Sruthi Chandran
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 20/03/2026: Cryptography Pioneers Win Turing Award and BMG Sues Anthropic for Copyright Infringement
Links for the day
Even Uganda Understands That Journalists Never Belong in Prison
"Ugandan authorities must respect the spirit of this ruling and abandon any measures that seek to jail Ugandans for the free flow of ideas."
Inaction Helps Your Enemies
Without freedom, there's nothing else left
Windows Down From 99% to ~50% in Republic of Seychelles (République des Seychelles)
Windows fell by a lot
Confluent Insiders: IBM Laid Over Over 800 at Confluent, Not Just 800
For the record, the layoffs at Confluent won't be over. After the bluewashing there will be "IBM RAs" impacting Confluent folks, aside from PIPs
The Layoffs at IBM Carry on (Shades of Enron)
Is IBM another Enron?
"IBM boss Arvind Krishna... financial package valued at $38 million in calendar 2025 - equivalent to the average collective pay of 765 Big Blue workers."
continues to ruin the company to enrich himself while pretending he has a strategy
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, March 19, 2026
IRC logs for Thursday, March 19, 2026
SLAPP Censorship - Part 16 Out of 200: Detailing the Actors and Explaining Techrights' Own Internet Relay Chat (IRC) Network
For those who have not followed our story
Microsoft "hiding behind bigger news of war, Epstein, other companies' layoffs"
They know what's coming, they just don't know when
Joerg Jaspert (Debian Account Manager/DAM) personally approved Raphael Hertzog's wife Sophie Brun
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Letter 'A' prohibited by Code of Conduct extremism
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Spoiler: Diversity & Debian means different things to different people
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) Admits Failures and Criticism of Inaction on SLAPPs
many if not all solicitors and solicitor firms in the UK are in effect unregulated
Archiving or Preserving Pages About IBM Layoffs
Layoffs at IBM and the media does not talk about these
ABC, the American National Broadcaster, "Now Publishes Slop"
If the "big media" absorbs slop, it'll no longer be trusted and therefore not read/watched by the public
Links 19/03/2026: Culling Deepfakes of Artists’ Music and "Age Verification Isn’t the Answer"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 19/03/2026: "Aktion GPT-4" and "Kill All Descendants"
Links for the day
"AI" 15 Times in Short 'Article' From The Register MS. And The Register MS Got Paid to Publish It.
gets paid to do this
People Who Decided to Boycott Novell Over Its Microsoft Alliance Should Also Boycott Canonical
As an associate put it, "selling out further, due to Microsoft moles inside Canonical"
Links 19/03/2026: "AI Glasses" as Euphemism for Mass Surveillance and ABC (US) Has Begun Publishing Slop as 'News'
Links for the day
The European Patent Office, Europe's Second-Largest Institution, is on Strike Today
Lots more to come
What People Impacted by the Bluewashing Layoffs at IBM Confluent Say (While the Media Says Nothing at All, in Effect Burying the News)
Worse yet, the mainstream media spreads lies about it right now
IBM Has Turned Red Hat and Fedora Into Slop
This is IBM policy
IBM is Being Robbed, Companies and Jobs Are Destroyed
Companies taken over by IBM will be exploited and destroyed to keep a bubble inflated for a little while longer
In Confluent Layoffs, IBM Vapourises a Quarter of Its Workforce (IBM Buys Something That It Destroys Already)
In the past, such things were typically referred to as "media blackout"; now it's just "the norm".
IBM Effect at Confluent: Mass Layoffs and IBM's Business Conduct Guidelines (BCGs) Said to be Violated
For Confluent employees who survived the layoffs there will be "culture chock"
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, March 18, 2026
IRC logs for Wednesday, March 18, 2026
Links 19/03/2026: LLM Fatigue (It Doesn't Work as Advertised), "Small Web Feeds"
Links for the day
SLAPP Censorship - Part 15 Out of 200: Background and Particulars of Truth Regarding Techrights and Tux Machines
the basic facts (this has aged well, except the times/ages/numbers)
A Slopfarms Survey for Today (linuxteck.com, linuxsecurity.com, linuxjournal.com)
Not only did Google news link to a slopfarm; it linked to three run by the same team!
Links 18/03/2026: "Venture Capitalist Warns That It’s All About to Come Crashing Down" Due to Slop Bubble, "Birdwatching for Fun and no Profit"
Links for the day
IBM Red Hat is Still Promoting Restricted Boot Which Restricts Users' Control Over Their Computers
Red Hat under IBM is a total catastrophe
Arvind Says... Something Something "Hey Hi" (the State of Today's Media)
Look for news about IBM and most likely it'll boil down to some sound bites from an executive and nothing else
New Post Has Just Explained How IBM Gets Robbed by the People Who Fail IBM
Their plan for IBM is a personal plan
Slop-Spewing GAFAM LLM That Knows Nothing and Understands Nothing, It's a Stochastic Parrot That Cannot Even Figure Out Tux Machines is a Community That Started in Tennessee 22 Years Ago
RMS rightly calls those things "bullshit generators"
Cusdeb Makes New Presentation About Where GNU Hurd (Still a Possible Linux Replacement) Stands in 2026
coming from a generally RMS-friendly account
Gemini Links 18/03/2026: Librarians, Phone Anxiety, Growing 'Small' Net, and Slop Versus Software Engineering
Links for the day
Estimates That IBM to Lay Off Close to 10,000 Workers in 2026 (Not Counting People Pushed Out)
There's still chatter about Confluent mass layoffs
Smug Threat by Garrett to Put My Family and I in Prison Doesn't Prove We Did Anything Wrong, It Only Proves He's Truly Desperate to Stop Further Publications That Embarrass Him
his reputation is poor in the United States
systemd Increasingly Microsoft Project, Controlled by Microsoft and Slopware
Cannot allow choice
What IBM Meant to Red Hat: "Proprietary Bundling, Restricted Source Access"
Anyone or anything that joins IBM likely shortens its lifespan
IBM Thrashing Confluent Upon Arrival, Based on Rumours
We deem it a bigger issue that investigative journalism perished, not that one must rely on hearsay online or mere "rumours"
Slop Is Plagiarism, Not (Vibe) Coding, and It's Not Automated, It Doesn't Save Money
Reject misnomers, explain what's actually happening
UPC is Still Illegal and Unconstitutional (Kangaroo Court for Patents, Manned by Corporate Staff), Federal Court of Justice of Germany Receives Belated Complaint About It
What is happening to Europe???
EPO Demonstration Happening Right Now, Later This Week Things Will Only Escalate Further
The SUEPO The Hague Committee wrote to staff this morning
Sophie Brun, Raphael Hertzog & Debian sexual conflicts of interest
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 18/03/2026: Commodore's Hedley Davis Dies, Apple Not Good Enough, Cheeto "Floats Treason Charges for Iran War Coverage"
Links for the day
A Step Close to Shutting Down the European Patent Office (EPO)
Not going to work all month long
EPO Staff Demonstration Today
The demonstration will be live-streamed for those thousands of colleagues who don't live in Munich
Gemini Links 18/03/2026: Brazilian SYN Attacks and BGP
Links for the day
LibreLocal Also Coming to Jordan, Kenya, Mexico, New Zealand, and Spain
It helps raise awareness of Software Freedom
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, March 17, 2026
IRC logs for Tuesday, March 17, 2026