Print 16 comment(s) - last by fteoath64.. on Oct 5 at 8:27 AM

SEC is the only party who will likely be privy to the terms of closed-door deal

Apple, Inc. (AAPL) has been quite active legally of late, carrying out a massive litigation war [1][2][3][4] [5][6][7][8] [9][10][11][12] with its top rivals who use Google Inc.'s (GOOG) Android OS.  But back in June, Apple was in court-endorsed settlement talks in a separate legal spat with Finland's Nokia Oyj. (HEL:NOK1V).  

Formerly the world's top smartphone maker, Nokia was bumped out of first place by Apple.  But in court it looked on the verge of victory, so Apple opted to enter a cross-licensing agreement, which some estimated could involve hundreds of millions of dollars in licensing payments to Nokia.

But here's the interesting thing:  Nobody knew what the settlement was worth, as Apple did not disclose it in its legal mandated financial filings.  Apple explains this away in that it felt the deal was in the "ordinary course of business" and not necessary to report to shareholders.

But the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) wasn't happy with this response.  It sent a frustrated letter [PDF] to Apple in June asking for the company to share with it the missing information.  It writes:

Apple complied filing some information on July 12, but including a "request for confidential treatment for selected portions of this letter."  In doing so Apple fought to keep details of the settlement out of the eyes of the public -- and its Android competitors.

Of course this isn't exactly uncommon in closed-door settlements in legal disputes between major corporations.  Still the SEC, privy to the secret information, apparently felt Apple was holding back.  It wrote [PDF] requesting more information, commenting:

Apple fulfilled that request with five pages of non-public confidential information filed on August 1.  On August 17 the SEC acknowledged receiving the document and stated [PDF] that it was satisfactory.  While not ruling out future inquiries against Apple, it now appears to be satisfied that it has sufficient details about the transaction.

As for the public, though, they are unlikely to ever find out what those details are, including how much per handset Apple is paying Nokia.

Sources: MacRumors, SEC [1],, [2],, [3]

Comments     Threshold


RE: HaHa
By kleinma on 10/3/2011 4:24:17 PM , Rating: 2
I think the reason to keep it private is so that if there were another cross license settlement they had to reach with another vendor, there would be no public precedent of how much someone else is getting paid per iPhone sold. So for example if Nokia is geting 10 bucks per iPhone sold, and all of a sudden someone else enters into settlement talks with Apple, Apple could low ball the price to start, instead of these companies knowing exactly what other companies are getting.

