After proving it can still innovate in the smartphone arena with the Lumia 900, Nokia is now getting aggressive about defending its patents. The company announced that it has filed patent suits against HTC, Research in Motion, and Viewsonic in the U.S. and Germany.
“We have already licensed our standards essential patents to more
than 40 companies,” Nokia’s chief legal officer Louise Pentland wrote in
a statement this morning. “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.”
While patent litigation is becoming tiresome, it makes sense for
Nokia to fight for compensation and potential licensing deals given its poor showing last quarter, where it saw a loss of $1.7 billion.
Nokia is suing for infringements on 45 patents, including hardware
features like “dual function antennas, power management and multimode
radios,” and software features that include multitasking, navigation,
and application stores. Pentland called many of the patents
“fundamental” to Nokia’s products — a sign that the company won’t back
down easily.
Specifically, Nokia issued a complaint to the ITC against HTC; filed
suit against Viewsonic and HTC in a Delaware federal court; filed suit
against RIM and HTC in the Regional Court in Dusseldorf, Germany; and
filed suit against all three companies in the Regional Courts in
Mannheim and Munich, Germany.
Update:RIM declined to comment on
litigation. HTC issued the following statement: “HTC has been a licensee
of Nokia on wireless essential patents since 2003. We are waiting to
receive a complaint and won’t have any comments until our legal team has
received and reviewed it.”
A Viewsonic representative sent us the following statement as well:
“ViewSonic is aware of this legal action. We are taking appropriate
measures to protect our interests.”
