Nokia has announced that it has registered several complaints in the US and Germany against Apple. Nokia is alleging that Apple is infringing on a number of patents owned by Nokia. Nokia has three valuable patent portfolios that are commonly used in various consumer electronics such as tablets, mobile phones and personalCOMPUTERS.
Nokia has invested EUR 115 billion (roughly Rs 8 lakh crore) in research and development over a course of twenty years in the industry, with tens of thousands of patents to its name. Nokia also owns the patents of Alcatel-Lucent and Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN). Nokia acquired Alcatel-Lucent in mid 2016 and bought out NSN in 2016.
“Through our sustained investment in research and development, Nokia has created or contributed to many of the fundamental technologies used in today’s mobile devices, including Apple products. After several years of negotiations trying to reach agreement to cover Apple’s use of these patents, we are now taking action to defend our rights,” said Ilkka Rahnasto, head of Patent Business at Nokia.
This is not the first time that Nokia has sued Apple. In fact, Nokia alleging patent infringement by Apple was the first salvo fired in the smartphone patent wars, in 2009. Apple countersued, and Nokia sued Apple over infringements of additional patents in 2009 itself. In 2011, Apple and Nokia agreed on a settlement. Nokia claims Apple has declined to license several other patents it uses since the 2011 agreement.
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Smartphone patent wars as visualised by George Kokkinidis at Design Language.
Nokia has registered the complaints in Regional Courts in Dusseldorf, Mannheim and Munich in Germany and the US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas in the US. Nokia alleges infringement of 32 patents covering the display, user interface, software, the antenna, chipsets and video encoding. Nokia has said that it is in the process of filling complaints in other jurisdictions as well.