An almost two year old patent dispute was won by Nokia against Apple Inc. as the largest mobile phone makers of the world reached a settlement according to which royalties and a one-time payment will be awarded to the Finnish handset maker. Nokia registered a growth of as much as 4.1% in Helsinki trading. This agreement will lead to the bolstering of the second quarter profitability of the Devices and Services unit, it was declared by Nokia in a statement today.
The details of the contract between Nokia and Apple under which Apple will have to pay Nokia royalties and an undisclosed sum are being kept confidential, according to a statement by the Finnish company. It is since October 2009 that the two mobile phone giants had been in litigation, when Nokia had accused California-based Apple of infringing its patents.
The company had also demanded loyalties for the millions of iPhones that have been sold by Apple since the introduction of the device in 2007. In March this year, Nokia declared that it has a total of 46 patent infringement claims against Apple in the form of civil lawsuits and complaints that it has lodged with the US International Trade Commission.
An analyst named Sami Sakamies at Nordea Bank AB situated in Helsinki, said while addressing clients today that Nokia has emerged as the clear winner in the lawsuit. It is expected that the initial payments will fall in the order of hundreds of millions of Euros which will be related to the 200 million iPhones which have been sold to date, he said.
This development saw Nokia shares rising by as much as 17.6 cents to 4.47 Euros immediately and the company traded 2.1% higher at 4.39 euros today. However, this doesn’t hide the fact that the stock has lost more than three quarters of its value since the iPhone was introduced by Apple back in June 2007.
A Stockholm-based analyst, Martin Nilsson, expressed that the payment of licensing fees between technology companies is nothing new. He explains that this is the way the industry has been working since the last 25 years and that the setup with Apple is not altogether different with what the company has with other such manufacturers. He added that the ruling was in line with expectations that the matter would be resolved with such an arrangement and that Nokia would become a net recipient.
