A number of lawsuits have been filed by Nokia in Germany and the United States against the tech giant Apple. The Finnish company is suing the Cupertino-based giant of patent infringement. This happened the day after Apple filed complaints against two patent licensors and accusing them of colluding with Nokia.
The lawsuits against Apple were filed in Dusseldorf, Mannheim, and Munich, Germany, and the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas. As of this writing, Nokia has filed a total number of 40 patent suits against Apple, claiming that the violations cover patents for chipsets, display, software, user interface, antenna, and video coding. Nokia added additional actions are to come.
Nokia sues Apple for infringing patents, industry back on war footing https://t.co/ThCvY2oZCw pic.twitter.com/uwisKEEeuI
— Reuters India (@ReutersIndia) December 21, 2016
Bloomberg noted that in the first complaint, Nokia claimed Apple "steadfastly refused" to license their patents for video coding, which the Cupertino-based giant still uses today, allowing for higher-quality transmission over cellular networks with lower bandwidth requirements, for Apple's streaming services, per complaint.
Prior to the lawsuits filed against Apple, the Cupertino-based giant had filed cases against two patent licensors, Acacia Research and Conversant Intellectual Property Management. Both companies license patents and have been accused of allegedly conspiring in anticompetitive behavior with the Finnish company, Nokia, to "extract and extort exorbitant revenues unfairly" from the tech giant and other cellphone manufacturers, according to Reuters.
The war between the two smartphone giants dates back in 2011 from a disagreement over licensing fees for Nokia Technology. "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," a statement from Nokia reported by USA Today.
Currently, to counterattack, Apple has filed a suit against Nokia, adding Nokia Solutions and Networks Oy, Nokia Corporation, and Nokia Technologies Oy to the list of defendants to the antitrust case. Further, in a released statement, Apple had said that with Nokia's cellphone business dying, the Finnish company has resulted to transfer patents to patent assertions entities to get out of Fair, Reasonable, and Non-Discriminatory (FRAND) licensing deals. This would allow the company to collect higher royalties.
Two years ago, Microsoft purchased Nokia for a $7.2 billion deal. Now, the Finnish company has been bought by another company named HMD Global, whose top heads used to work for Nokia in the past. Nokia has a 10-year licensing deal with HMD, allowing the marketing of low-cost smartphones and the re-introduction of Nokia models back in the market.
