Nokia has filed a number of lawsuits against Apple for violating 32
technology patents, striking back at the iPhone maker's legal action
targeting the one-time mobile phone industry leader a day earlier.
Nokia's lawsuits were filed in courts in Dusseldorf, Mannheim and Munich in
Germany, and in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas.
They cover patents for displays, user interfaces, software, antennas,
chipsets and video coding.
"Since agreeing a license covering some patents from the Nokia Technologies
portfolio in 2011, Apple has declined subsequent offers made by Nokia to
license other of its patented inventions which are used by many of Apple's
products," Nokia said in a statement.
Apple earlier this week had taken legal action against Acacia Research and
Conversant Intellectual Property Management, accusing them of colluding with
Nokia to extract and extort exorbitant revenues unfairly from Apple.
"We've always been willing to pay a fair price to secure the rights of
patents covering technology in our products," said Apple spokesman Josh
Rosenstock.
"Unfortunately, Nokia has refused to license their patents on a fair basis
and is now using the tactics of a patent troll to attempt to extort money
from Apple by applying a royalty rate to Apple's own inventions they had
nothing to do with."
The legal action by Nokia and Apple appear to mark a revival of the
"smartphone patent wars" that began five years ago, when Apple filed a
series of patent infringement cases against Samsung Electronics around the
world, with wins and losses on both sides.
Apple's lawsuit against Acacia, Conversant and Nokia was filed only one day
after Ottawa-based Conversant named Boris Teksler as its new chief
executive.
He had worked as Apple's director of patent licensing and strategy from 2009
to 2013, the latter half of his tenure overlapping with the lawsuits against
Samsung.
Acacia is a publicly traded patent licensing firm based in Newport Beach,
California. One of its subsidiaries sued Apple for patent infringement and
was awarded $22m by a Texas jury in September.
Similarly, Conversant, which claims to own thousands of patents, announced
last week that a Silicon Valley jury had awarded one of its units a $7.3m
settlement in an infringement case against Apple involving two smartphone
patents.
Nokia, once the world's dominant mobile phone maker, missed out on the
transition to smartphones triggered by Apple's introduction of the iPhone in
2007.
The Finnish company sold its handset business to Microsoft two years ago,
leaving it with its telecom network equipment business and a bulging
portfolio of mobile equipment patents.
But this year, Microsoft sold its Nokia-feature phone business to a new
company called HMD Global.
Nokia agreed to a 10-year licensing deal with HMD, which continues to market
low-cost Nokia phones and plans to introduce new Nokia smartphone models
next year.
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