Nokia's suit against Apple, which it announced yesterday, is most unlikely to make it to court, according to patent attorney at Ipulse, Nicholas Fox.
Fox said that a case such as this is "almost certain to end up settling well before it goes to court." Negotiations would have been ongoing for a while, and this is a sign that Nokia is frustrated with the progress of those negotiations, he said.
Nokia's patents are held in a patent pool, contributed to by a clutch of manufacturers, and the level of damages the company could expect will be limited by how important those patents are to the standard, and also to the operation of the iPhone. Fox said that if all the patents in the pool are relevant, it "could be" that we will see other claimants from contributors to the standards iPhone.
A release from the Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys said that the Nokia claim could end up bigger than the settlement between Blackberry and NP in 2006, in which Blackberry ended up paying NTP $612 million.
Damages in patent cases are determined by how important they are to the overall working of a device. Something mechanical and basic might attract a 5% license levy, but patents such as those held by Nokia, which are just parts of a very sophisticated device, would attract "quite a lot lower" tariffs, Fox said.