Apple finally pays Nokia to settle the licence disputes. Will they give in to Android too?

Good news for Nokia as they finally get what they were hoping for from Apple. A one-off payment plus ongoing royalties – the specific terms have not been revealed. This was all down to Nokia and Apple having a large patent dispute, unfortunately we are not sure which of the many disputed patents have been settled and it is probably only a few.

“We are very pleased to have Apple join the growing number of Nokia licensees,” said Stephen Elop, president and CEO of Nokia. “This settlement demonstrates Nokia’s industry leading patent portfolio and enables us to focus on further licensing opportunities in the mobile communications market.”

Taking on Apple and winning is something that will certainly give Nokia a lot more strength in the market and will probably see them targeting Samsung and HTC to sort out even more patent infringements, it at least looks like Nokia were slightly ahead of the game which is certainly saying something!

The one-off payment will be a retrospective compensation dating back to somewhere in 2007 while the royalties will be paid for each iOS device sold and even though a singular royalty will be fairly small (the patented ideas/parts are a very small part of the overall product), Apple have sold quite a few (Just 2 or 3….).

Hopefully we may get some indication of the amounts of money involved within a couple of months as Nokia have said it will have a positive impact on its Q2 results, so when we see those figures we will have to presume some of the revenue is down to Apple. A very strange state of affairs!

If you would like the see more details take a look at FOSS Patents.