Nokia Patent War Spans Delaware To Dusseldorf
It should come as no surprise that we're continuing to see patent litigation here in the spring of 2012, especially when it has to do with mobile corporations like Nokia, HTC, RIM, and Viewsonic. What we've got here is Nokia taking the latter three manufacturers to court on several counts of patent infringement in so many locations around the earth you'll not know where to fly to see the whole shebang. From Germany to Delaware and back again it's Nokia asserting itself as a group that will not be pushed around, from one perspective, and will continue to seek out cash where they're owed, on the other.
Nokia is seeking suits against HTC, Viewsonic, and RIM in different combinations in the Federal District Court of Delaware, the Regional Court in Dusseldorf, and the Regional Courts in Mannheim as well as Munich, Germany. Nokia products are being protected here, so says Nokia itself in a release on the subject today. They don't like to head to court like this, they're saying, but they're definitely up for some wide punches if need be.
"Nokia is a leader in many technologies needed for great mobile products. We have already licensed our standards essential patents to more than 40 companies. Though we'd prefer to avoid litigation, Nokia had to file these actions to end the unauthorized use of our proprietary innovations and technologies, which have not been widely licensed." – Louise Pentland, chief legal officer at Nokia
Products being made by the three companies at hand here are being said to have been made with Nokia-invented properties without their consent. Hardware capabilities that include dual function antennas, power management, and multimode radios are included here, as are software bits like application stores, multitasking, navigation, conversational message display, dynamic menus, data encryption, and email attachment retrieval. Pentland is not happy about what's happening in Germany and Delaware, that's for certain.
"Many of these inventions are fundamental to Nokia products. We'd rather that other companies respect our intellectual property and compete using their own innovations, but as these actions show, we will not tolerate the unauthorized use of our inventions." – Pentland
With the release of several new smartphones this season, Nokia is likely to continue to keep a close eye on their intellectual property now more than ever. Nokia is the once all-powerful king of global cell-phone sales, and they're certainly not going to give that top spot away easily or any time soon.