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Nokia MeeGo distribution and patents | 379 comments | Create New Account
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Nokia MeeGo distribution and patents
Authored by: ailuromancy on Sunday, October 14 2012 @ 04:13 AM EDT

Yes. Nokia has sold more N9's than Lumia's even though Elop restricted sales of the N9 to low population and poor countries and gave it a minimal ($0?) marketing budget. Nokia also has another Meego phone (N950) tested and ready for mass production, but Elop refuses to sell it anywhere. Perhaps too many Germans were driving to Switzerland to buy N9's.

As for distribution of N9's providing a patent license, that would depend on the software licence. GPL V3 contains explicit sections on software patents. If Nokia are distributing GPL V3 software that depends on their patents then that should mean they are licensing the patents for use by that software and its derivatives. Failure to provide that patent license would put Nokia in breach of the GPL, and the owner of that software could insist that Nokia ceases to distribute it. Elop would probably throw a party.

GPL V2 dates back to the time when even patent lawyers knew that software is mathematics, and not patentable. The license does not explicitly mention software patents but does have sections that are sufficiently general that they should require a distributor to license any patents they control that would otherwise restrict distribution of the GPL V2 software they distribute. AFAIK, this has not been tested in court.

Sales figures at this link (if Geeklog does not insert spaces in it):

http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2012/01/how-many-lumi a-sales-as-nokia-and-microsoft-ashamed-to-reveal-number-lets-count-and-compare-t o-n9-me.html

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

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