The United States’ largest mobile phone company, Nokia, filed yet another lawsuit on tech giant Apple Inc. for making use of what Nokia has alleged as their intellectual property. Nokia filed the patent violation lawsuit with the Federal Trade Commission this week and reported that Apple is using their patented technology in a wide variety of popular Apple products (they indicated that they thought Apple’s iPad 2, iPod and iPhone all make use of Nokia patented technology).
Apple has been battling Nokia in court for years over similar patent violation complaints; industry experts suspect that Nokia is using the legal system in an effort to keep pace with rapidly developing mobile technology industry movers and shakers like Apple Inc.
Lately, many mobile technology companies such as Nokia, Apple, HTC, Motorola and Microsoft are vying for market space by using patent lawsuits to slow down their competition. The lawsuits range in scope, but cover nearly every aspect of mobile technology that you probably use every day, including everything from patents on cellular function to contact management and battery technology.
Winning a patent violation lawsuit can mean huge settlements and regular dividends from competitors for the winning company–this will often delay development of technology (while companies devise ways to avoid patent violation lawsuits) or keep a company from entering a particular market at all.
Nokia spokeman & VP of intellectual property, Paul Melin reported that Apple is currently in violation of 46 of Nokia’s patents. The flurry of patent violation lawsuits between large mobile technology companies comes at a time where the smartphone and tablet PC markets are growing heavily and becoming heavily saturated with new products. Now, more than ever, it is important for companies like Nokia, Apple, HTC, Microsoft and Motorola to stake a claim with consumers–those who don’t do so soon may be left behind.
Nokie holds the rights to over ten thousand patents–one of the largest patent rights portfolios in the world. Nokia’s impressive library of patents is in no small part due to their investment of $43 billion into their R&D department.
