It's one of those news stories that you read and think with a puzzled look: "What is the poet trying to say?" Last Monday, Nokia filed a friendly petition in the New York Court of Appeals on behalf of Apple, asking for permission to ban Samsung products in the US that were found to infringe Apple patents. Nokia.
Last summer, during the lawsuit between Apple and Samsung, which ended with a fine of over $1 billion against Samsung, Judge Lucy Koh, in response to Apple's request to ban the distribution of certain devices from the Korean company, said she would consider it with additional evidence in December. That month, the judge rejected Apple's request to ban the distribution of the Korean products, reasoning that Apple had to prove that the patents infringed by those products were a significant factor in their claim.
The decision of Ms. Koh, according to Apple, sets very high standards and she decided to appeal it. In this appeal, Nokia comes to support her with its supplementary filing, which argues that patent laws exist to boost the development of technology for the public good, and also supports banning the circulation of products that are found to violate these laws in «specific circumstances» and according to one of the Finnish lawyers, Ms. Koh «made a mistake deciding that Apple should prove the relationship between a patented technology and the demand that devices using it have».
It is clear that Nokia wants to get into the patent game as a serious player in the American market. Owner of several thousand patents concerning mobile telephony and software, for some time the company has been aligned with legal actions. It is strange, very strange however, that Nokia is the only company that actually stands as a rival to Apple, a company with which it had a similar legal dispute, up to 2009. The world is changing, dad…
Dimitrios Georgoulas @ GreekAppleNews
