Engadget’s resident legal gadget eagle, Nilay Patel, has put together a great, depth analysis of Nokia’s recent lawsuit against Apple and the iPhone over patent infringement.

As usual, the race to hype this dispute as a bitter standoff between two tech giants desperate to destroy one another has all but ignored the reality of how patents — especially wireless patents — are licensed, what Nokia’s actually asking for, and how it might go about getting it. And as you know, we just don’t do things that way, so we’ve asked our old friend Mathew Gavronski, a patent attorney in the Chicago office of Michael Best & Friedrich, to help us sort things out and figure out what’s really going on here — read on for more.

In a nutshell, Nokia believes Apple is infringing on 10 patents that are core to GSM/UTMS/Wi-Fi. All the other major players have paid up. Apple hasn’t. Apple may believe the patent fees are already paid by the manufacturer of the components they bought for the iPhone, or they may just be using the legal system as way to negotiate a lower ultimate licensing fee from Nokia.

If the area interests you, check out the whole analysis and then let us know what you think!

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Why Nokia is Suing Apple Over the iPhone

According to an Engadget exclusive, Apple brought a new specification for optical port connection to Intel who, after some heated back and forth, has produced Light Peak:

Based on what we’ve learned, Apple will introduce the new standard for its systems around Fall 2010 in a line of Macs destined for back-to-school shoppers — a follow-up to the “Spotlight turns to notebooks” event, perhaps. Following the initial launch, there are plans to roll out a low-power variation in 2011, which could lead to more widespread adoption in handhelds and cellphones. The plans from October 2007 show a roadmap that includes Light Peak being introduced to the iPhone / iPod platform to serve as a gateway for multimedia and networking outputs. While the timing doesn’t line up, a low-powered Light Peak sounds like the kind of technology that would be perfect for a device with a need for broad connectivity but limited real estate for ports… like a tablet.

Can one port rule — and replace — them all? Do we want to kiss our USB/FireWire, VGA/DVI/DisplayPort, Ethernet, and all other connectors goodbye and replace them with a single, standardized optical cable? Check out Engadget’s full post for more, then let us know what you think.

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Apple Gets Intel to Create “Light Peak” Optical Connection — All Your Ports Has Belong to Us

New Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein was the debut guest on the brand new The Engadget Show, and host Joshua Topolsky asked many of the questions that needed asking. Starting off with some of Ruby’s history at NeXT and Apple with Steve Jobs and his role in resurrecting the latter with products like the iMac and iPod, they segued into Palm talk for a bit, before bringing in back around to more controversial topics like Palm holding product announcements/releases right before annual Apple iPhone/iPod events, and the ongoing Palm “hacking” iTunes sync saga.

Fascinating interview, and awesome start for the Engadget crew. Congrats on the new endeavor, and we can’t wait to see if Jobs, Schiller, Cook, Joz, or Forestall show up next…

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Palm CEO Talks NeXT, Apple, iPhone on Engadget Show

Yep, the iPhone has won Engadget’s Gadget of the Year and Smartphone of the Year awards, not just from the editors, but from the readers as well. That’s quadrupal honors for those keeping score at home.

For the Engadget Awards in general, the editors also picked the unibody MacBook, and iPod touch (handheld and portable), and gave the BlackBerry Storm the worst gadget honors. Readers, meanwhile went far more Apple, with for iMac, unibody MacBook, 24″ LED Cinema Display, the iPod touch (for both handheld and portable), and Time Capsule for storage. Zune was worst gadget.

TiPb’s own Editor Awards and Reader’s Choice Awards were handed out on New Year and Oscar Sunday respectively.

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iPhone Wins Gadget of the Year, Smartphone of the Year at Engadget Awards

Someone told Daring Fireball that Apple not only asked Google to remove the multi-touch from the Android/HTC T-Mobile G1 smartphone, but also to remove the 3.5mm headphone jack.

The first part was reported earlier and makes the kind of sense that only tricky mega-corp coopetion can make (iPhone eyeballs are more valuable to Google than the G1’s multi-touch at this point). The second part… not so much. Specifically, Daring Fireball’s source mentioned Apple’s use of the remote buttons on the headset to control media playback as the reason for Google avoiding the jack entirely on the G1. (Note: while this sounds familiar, a Google search didn’t turn up any links for Apple patenting anything associated with such processes, so if anyone can point us towards that info, please let us know in the comments).

Other smartphones have long used the 3.5mm headphone jack, and since the G1 is hardly a media powerhouse (it doesn’t even include a built-in video app), there’s little reason to believe HTC couldn’t have included a non-remote, standard 3.5mm jack.

(Aside: Our editor-in-chief, Dieter Bohn, has managed to confirm that both the BlackBerry Curve 8900 and Pearl both make use of some type of headset based media control, so there we go…)

Chris Ziegler over at Engadget Mobile weighs in, calling the entire Apple/Google story from VentureBeat FUD, and the sourcing on the 3.5mm piece sketchy, and while admittedly an unnamed Android source, absent corroboration, doesn’t pass the traditional media test, here’s the other thing:

HTC seems to love the ExtUSB in lieu of 3.5mm headset jack. It’s not just the G1, but an increasing array of their smartphones that are — and will be according to the 2009 HTC roadmap that was leaked — abandoning 3.5mm for the ExtUSB.

So, we’re not sold on this story yet, how about you? Does it seem likely Apple talked Google out of a 3.5mm jack, or that HTC just plain doesn’t like them and never considered it?

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

On Apple, Android, and 3.5mm Headset Jacks