Nokia Sues Apple for Patent Infringement

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Imagine my surprise to see Nokia sue Apple. The Finnish giant has just realized that Apple is (allegedly) infringing no less than ten Nokia patents with its iPhone. The trial has been filed with the Federal District Court in Delaware and it should be a very interesting case to follow.

Nokia says that the iPhone is infringing GSM, UMTS, WLAN patents and the obvious conclusion is that Apple has to pay for its mistakes. Nokia claims that it has invested more than 40 million Euros in Research & Development over the last twenty years. Furthermore, the company has agreements with about 40 companies including these patents with “virtually all the leading mobile device vendors.” What happened with Apple then? Did Cupertino refuse to pay the fees? Did Nokia ask too much money for said patents?

The patents relate to “technologies fundamental to making devices which are compatible with one or more of the GSM, UMTS (3G WCDMA) and wireless LAN standards.” Various important matters like wireless data, speech coding, security and encryption are apparently infringed not only by one iPhone in particular, but by all iPhone versions.

All this sounds pretty serious and we can’t help but wonder why hasn’t Nokia sued Apple earlier on? After all we’ve already seen the first iPhone, the iPhone 3G and the iPhone 3GS. Apple has sold some 34 million phones in a little over two years. What was Nokia doing all this time? They must have known Apple isn’t paying for those patents so why not act faster?

Let’s not forget that Nokia had a disastrous last quarter compared to Apple’s reported results. Although it keeps it crown in the mobile business, Nokia is surely unhappy with recent numbers. So maybe this is all a scheme meant to cover some of those loses with Apple settlement money.

We will be watching this battle closely and return with more details once we have them.