October 24, 2009 by James Oliver
Mobile phone giant, Nokia is to sue apple in an attempt to extract royalty payments they claim they are owed by the computer manufacturer. Nokia’s story is that a number of their patents were infringed by Apple in the manufacture of the iPhone. Analysts have estimated that they think Nokia might be looking for as much as one or two percent of the price of an iPhone in royalties, backdated to the launch of the device, obviously. That shakes out to a maximum of $12 dollars per iPhone. Apple have so far sold more than 30 million units, meaning they could stand to pay as much as $400 million dollars.
Apple recently posted profits of $1.67 billion for the last quarter so $400 million is actually a relatively small amount when viewed in the context of the galactic the sums of money flying about in the computer industry.
Of course, it’s unlikely that this amount of money will ever actually change hands between the two companies. What’s more probable is that if it is proven that Apple have violated copyright, some sort of arrangement will be reached behind closed doors and we’ll ever find out the amount. Spoil-sports.
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