Apple-Nokia Patent War Begins New Round

Nokia and Apple continue to lock horns over smartphone patents, after 13 fresh complaints was filed by Nokia in the UK, Germany and the Netherlands.

Nokia is now accusing Apple of infringing a grand total of 24 of its patents, including the technology behind touch screens and on-device app stores.

Essentially, Nokia and Apple each claim the other is using patented technology without paying royalties. Nokia believes that Apple is “getting a free ride” on implementations of fundamental communications technology such as UMTS, GSM and wireless LAN, while Apple thinks recent Nokia phones infringe on aspects of the iPhone.

Ongoing Battle

The two companies had been negotiating, but then in October 2009 negotiations broke down and Nokia announced it was suing Apple. Apple counter-sued in December, and later sought to have Nokia phones banned in the United States.

Apple then expanded its patent war with Nokia in September this year, when the iPad maker announced it was suing Nokia  in Britain, a move that broadened the legal conflict which had begun in the United States to foreign shores.

And now Nokia has countersued, in the High Court in London; district courts in Düsseldorf and Mannheim (Germany); and a district court in The Hague (the Netherlands). Nokia’s suit claims that Apple is improperly using Nokia technologies in the iPhone, iPad and iPod devices.

Fresh Lawsuits

According to the Wall Street Journal, Nokia alleges that Apple used 13 of its patents without its permission.

“The Nokia inventions protected by these patents include several which enable compelling user experiences,” Paul Melin, a Nokia vice president in charge of intellectual property, is quoted as saying by the Journal.

It seems that two of the patents that Nokia is claiming are the familiar finger “wiping gesture” used to navigate content on a touch screen, and the technology that enables access to the real-time services of an applications store.

Melin said Nokia had filed patents protecting both technologies more than 10 years ago.

Analyst View

Nick Jones, a mobile analyst at research firm Gartner however believes that Nokia is attempting to demonstrate to its investors that as a company, it isn’t behind Apple in everything, as Nokia had developed these technologies more than a decade before the launch of Apple’s iPhone.

“Part of the game that’s being played here is Nokia showing its investors that it isn’t behind Apple in everything, and that it’s just acting responsibly in protecting its IP which is as much of an asset as its staff and factories,” wrote Jones on his blog. “We have to assume that this escalation in the patent wars is a conscious policy of Nokia’s new CEO Steve Elop because you don’t sue Apple without telling the CEO.”

What is clear is that Apple And Nokia are coming into increasing competition with one another, not just because of Apple’s entry into the smartphone arena, and Nokia’s current struggle to maintain its leading market share position against both Apple and increasingly Android handsets. Both Nokia and Apple are thought to be competing for the LTE patents of bankrupt Nortel for example.