Nokia Gives Laid Off Employees $30K Loans to Start New Firms

From DailyTech: Say what you will about Finnish phonemaker Nokia Oyj.'s (HEX:NOK1V) struggles in the market, but the company does deserve plenty of credit for a uniquely humane approach to employee layoffs.

While the company has committed to trim its ranks by 10,000 employees by 2013, the company has also announced an initiative called the "Nokia Bridge Program", an incubator project that gives seed money of €25,000 ($30,650 USD) or £20,000 ($31,000 USD) in the UK.

The funding is essentially a low-interest loan -- Nokia does not take an equity stake in the startups. It also does not transfer patents to them, although it has worked out special licensing agreements with some startups looking to produce defunct Nokia projects.

One example of such a license is Jolla, a startup formed by fleeing Nokia executives, which looks to reboot Meego. Nokia killed Meego when it opted to join ranks with Microsoft Corp.'s (MSFT) Windows Phone brigade, but Jolla is working to revive the property. (Intel Corp. (INTC), Nokia's co-partner on the Meego project has branched the project to a new tree under the name "Tizen".)

It is somewhat unclear, though, whether Jolla has a full intellectual property rights (IPR) license, or merely is permitted to use Meego under some other contract (the software is, after all mostly GPL licensed, although some APIs are LGPL licensed).

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