Nokia has sued Apple in Germany and the US for infringement of a number of its patents. Apple has already been a Nokia Patents licensee since 2011 and this patent licensing agreement ends December 31 2016. Under terms of this agreement, Apple paid one time huge sum and was committed to pay ongoing royalties to Nokia.
As per Nokia, Apple has declined subsequent offers made by Nokia to license its patents. Since Apple Products still infringe Nokia patents, Nokia has decided to take Apple to the task.
Read the full press release below,
Nokia sues Apple in Europe and the US for infringement of Nokia patents
Espoo, Finland – Nokia announced that it has today filed a number of complaints against Apple in Germany and the US, alleging that Apple products infringe a number of Nokia patents.
As one of the world’s leading innovators, and following the acquisition of full ownership of NSN in 2013 and Alcatel-Lucent in 2016, Nokia now owns three valuable portfolios of intellectual property. Built on more than EUR 115 billion invested in R&D over the past twenty years, our tens of thousands of patents cover many important technologies used in smartphones, tablets, personal computers and similar devices.
Since agreeing a license covering some patents from the Nokia Technologies portfolio in 2011, Apple has declined subsequent offers made by Nokia to license other of its patented inventions which are used by many of Apple’s products.
Ilkka Rahnasto, head of Patent Business at Nokia, said: “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.”
These actions have been filed with the Regional Courts in Dusseldorf, Mannheim and Munich in Germany and the US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, with 32 patents in suit across all of the actions, covering technologies such as display, user interface, software, antenna, chipsets and video coding. Nokia is in the process of filing further actions in other jurisdictions.
