Nokia head swaps Microsoft shares for own firm: report

Nokia chief executive and former Microsoft executive Stephen Elop, who has sealed a tie up deal with the US giant, this week swapped all of his Microsoft shares for Nokia stock, reports said Friday.
"On Thursday, Elop bought 150,000 Nokia shares for one million euros ($1.35 million)," financial daily Kauppalehti reported, adding that this was the first time Elop had bought Nokia stock.
Elop's dearth of Nokia shares has raised some eyebrows, but he told reporters ahead of the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona last week that insider trading rules had long prohibited him from selling Microsoft or buying Nokia stock earlier, as negotiations were underway with Microsoft on a strategic partnership.
"As soon as I'm clear of the legal restrictions, of course I'll get rid of the rest of my Microsoft shares," he told reporters on Sunday.
Elop, a Canadian, left Microsoft for Nokia last September, becoming the first non-Finn to captain the world's largest mobile phone maker.
"He might want to send a clear message that he's now part of another company," Pohjola Bank analyst Hannu Rauhala told AFP Friday, adding that owning so many shares ties Nokia's leadership to the company's overall performance.
"If it goes well, they win, and if it goes poorly then they lose," Rauhala pointed out.
Last Friday, Elop said that Nokia, which has been hard-hit by harsh competition from Apple and Google, would dramatically shift its strategy and abandon its own smartphone platforms to adopt Microsoft Phone.
The strategic shift was prefaced by an internal memo that leaked to media, in which Elop said Nokia was "standing on a burning platform" surrounded by a "blazing fire" of competition.
Nokia's share price plummeted more than 20 percent after the announcement, falling earlier this week to its lowest level since 1998, allowing Elop to buy his shares at a deep discount.
"I was legally prohibited from buying in Nokia until all of this news was out," he insisted on February 13.
The move to ditch Symbian for Microsoft is seen as immensely unpopular in Finland, amid fears of massive layoffs and a brain-drain of developer talent from Helsinki to Silicon Valley as a result.
Finnish media lambasted the move, with some reports accusing Elop of masterminding a Microsoft takeover of Nokia - speculation that was fuelled by the fact that Elop until Thursday had significant holdings in Microsoft and few-to-none in Nokia.
News agency STT called it a "total surrender" while financial paper Kauppalehti quoted a Finnish analyst predicting Microsoft would buy Nokia outright, with Elop acting as a Trojan horse.
The purchase makes Elop the third largest shareholder among Nokia's leadership, behind board chairman Jorma Ollila and executive vice president Mary McDowell.

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Microsoft will not pursue keyword trade mark users in US

Microsoft will no longer investigate complaints that words used to trigger search adverts constitute trade mark infringement in the US. The change to its search advert policy in the US mirrors Google's existing policy.
The rules governing search adverts in the UK remain unchanged and forbid the use of keywords in a way that infringes trade mark law.
Keywords are terms which companies bid on so that their adverts appear when users of search engines search for that word or phrase. Trade mark owners have sought to have courts rule that one company using another's trade mark as an ad trigger breaches trade mark law.
Those companies have been largely unsuccessful. A number of US lawsuits have failed, and in a case involving Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy (LVMH), the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has ruled that trade mark rights are only infringed by ads that cause confusion about the identity of the advertiser.
Eric Goldman, a law professor at Santa Clara University School of Law in the US, reported the change to Microsoft's US policies for its adCenter search ads system.
"Starting March 3, 2011, adCenter will no longer review trademark keyword complaints. However, adCenter will continue to investigate brand owner complaints related to trademark use in ad text," said an email from Microsoft, according to Goldman.
Microsoft's policy for the US states that it will still investigate complaints about the misuse of trade marked terms in the text of an advert.
The company's UK policy says that it will still look into UK instances of trade mark use in keywords.
"You may not bid on as a keyword, or use in the content of your ads, any term whose use would infringe the trademark of any third party or otherwise be unlawful or in violation of the rights of any third party," it said.
The European Parliament recently adopted a resolution calling for search engine companies to be prevented from allowing one company to bid on keywords that were trade marked by another company.
"[The Commission should] modify the limited liability regime for information society services in order to make the sale by search engines of registered brand names as advertising keywords subject to prior authorisation from the owner of the brand name in question," said the Parliament resolution.

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