If you’re a keen reader of this blog (and if not, why on earth aren’t you?), then you’ll probably know about the massive brouhaha between Apple and Samsung over intellectual property – but you might not know that they’re not the only ones currently in the courts regarding this.
Today, a German court ruled against Nokia regarding a case brought against them by IPCom regarding emergency services access – but Nokia say that it doesn’t matter, as all the devices found to be in breach of that particular patent were made before it came in to play.
Confused? We certainly are. Mark Durrant, a Nokia spokesman, put it rather simply, saying “The Mannheim court found that Nokia’s older phones would have infringed the patent. We respectfully disagree with this decision, but almost all of these phones pre-dated the grant of the patent in February 2011 and our products today use different methods” – which seems to clear up the whole mess.
Well, it’s clearing up one mess, at least; IPCom are an IP company, which basically means they buy up patents, then try and sue people who they think are using them incorrectly – and they’ve hounded Nokia all around the world regarding this since they bought the IP from Bosch about five years ago.
The two companies have been arguing for a very long time over this now – but it doesn’t seem to be anywhere near over yet…
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