Nokia and Apple announced today that they have settled all litigation related to their intellectual property dispute and agreed a multi-year patent license.
“This is a meaningful agreement between Nokia and Apple,” said Maria Varsellona, Chief Legal Officer at Nokia, responsible for Nokia’s patent licensing business, in a statement. “It moves our relationship with Apple from being adversaries in court to business partners working for the benefit of our customers.”
Under a business collaboration agreement, Nokia will be providing certain network infrastructure product and services to Apple. Apple will resume carrying Nokia digital health products (formerly under the Withings brand) in Apple retail and online stores, and Apple and Nokia are exploring future collaboration in digital health initiatives. Regular summits between top Nokia and Apple executives will ensure that the relationship works effectively and to the benefit of both parties and their customers.
“We are pleased with this resolution of our dispute and we look forward to expanding our business relationship with Nokia,” said Jeff Williams, Apple’s chief operating officer, in a statement.
“This agreement will strengthen our collaboration,” said Basil Alwan, President of Nokia’s IP/Optical Networks business, in a statement. “We look forward to supporting Apple.”
While details of the agreement remain confidential, Nokia will receive an up-front cash payment from Apple, with additional revenues during the term of the agreement.
The value of the agreement will be reflected partially as patent licensing net sales in Nokia Technologies and partially as net sales in other Nokia business groups. Nokia will follow its existing practices for disclosing patent licensing revenue in its quarterly announcements and expects that revenues for the agreement will start to be recognized in the second quarter of 2017, including an element of non-recurring catch-up revenue.
Due to the up-front cash payment from Apple, Nokia intends to provide a comprehensive update of its capital structure optimization program in conjunction with its third quarter 2017 results.
Source: Apple Inc.
MacDailyNews Take: Settled.
SEE ALSO:
Apple sues Nokia’s patent trolls; says Nokia attempting to ‘compensate for its own failing cell phone business’ – December 21, 2016
Nokia sues Apple in Germany and the US for infringement of Nokia patents – December 21, 2016
So, Mr. MDN editor, do you think this might strengthen Apple’s hand in litigation against greedy Qualcomm?
The other day I saw another patent issue raised on one of the cable financial shows that was talking HUGE money (multiple 10s of billions). It sounded like talks have been going on for years. I don’t pretend to know how this whole Troll thing works, but for some reason the host said this rang somewhat different and the plaintiff was the actual developer of the patent. Is this just an every day occurrence or do these things actually cause damage? I think the company was Voip Pal or VPOM…it was just a brief mention. I see where Knott mentions Qualcomm and was just wondering if there are always dozens of these suits that Apple’s legal team is swatting at.