Reddit Inc., the social media platform gearing up for an initial public offering this week, said Nokia Oyj has accused it of infringing some of their patents.
Nokia is no stranger to patent fights. In February, the company reached a patent agreement with Chinese phone maker Vivo, ending a years-long dispute that dragged the two companies into court and forced Vivo to pull out of Germany. In 2021, Daimler and Nokia settled a dispute over the licensing of wireless technology patents in cars, ending a legal battle that had at one point threatened sales of the iconic Mercedes brand in its home country.
Nokia actually is a big player in 5G networks, which is what the Vivo one was about. I’m not sure you can call them a patent troll for defending patents that they’re actually using
Large corporations devote significant resources to developing patentable technologies strictly for IP creation rather than productization. Part of this is for aggressive licensing purposes, part is for participation in patent licensing pools with other major companies, and part is for defensive purposes wrt blowback analysis (i.e., someone considers enforcing their own IP, but the target has so much other IP that could be turned against them, the blowback risk outweighs the possible gain in a successful enforcement).
This is pretty different than a troll, which typically does not develop technology but rather goes out and snaps up assets on firesale from companies having solvency issues or pruning their portfolios. Moreover, trolls are not entering pools or worrying about blowback… they produce nothing so they cannot infringe a target’s IP.
Is Nokia becoming some sort of patent troll?
Nokia actually is a big player in 5G networks, which is what the Vivo one was about. I’m not sure you can call them a patent troll for defending patents that they’re actually using
Right, but all those cases involved companies that were doing legit things with wireless. This is Reddit, though. Where do their businesses intercept?
The only thing I can think of is maybe they have some patent on actual trolls. They are from a Nordic country, after all.
Heh
Large corporations devote significant resources to developing patentable technologies strictly for IP creation rather than productization. Part of this is for aggressive licensing purposes, part is for participation in patent licensing pools with other major companies, and part is for defensive purposes wrt blowback analysis (i.e., someone considers enforcing their own IP, but the target has so much other IP that could be turned against them, the blowback risk outweighs the possible gain in a successful enforcement).
This is pretty different than a troll, which typically does not develop technology but rather goes out and snaps up assets on firesale from companies having solvency issues or pruning their portfolios. Moreover, trolls are not entering pools or worrying about blowback… they produce nothing so they cannot infringe a target’s IP.