Nokia has just announced via a press release that it is taking multiple legal actions to protect patents it feels are violated by HTC, RIM, and Viewsonic. In the US, the Finnish handset maker has filed a complaint to the US International Trade Commission (ITC) against HTC, as well as patent infringement lawsuits against HTC and Viewsonic in US Federal District Court in Delaware. In Germany, Nokia has filed patent infringement suits against HTC and RIM in Dusseldorf, Germany, and suits against all three companies in Mannheim and Munich.
Nokia is claiming the violation of a total of 45 of its patents by the companies, including those that cover “dual function antennas, power management and multimode radios, as well as to enhance software features including application stores, multitasking, navigation, conversational message display, dynamic menus, data encryption and retrieval of email attachments on a mobile device”. The company claims that these patents are fundamental to Nokia products, and they will do everything in their power to ensure these technologies aren’t blindly copied by other competitors.
According to Nokia, they have already licensed the technology covered by several of these patents to various companies, making it clear that HTC, RIM, and Viewsonic have the licensing option going forward. Still, Nokia suggests that they’d like to see these companies compete using their own innovations. This is obviously the same shtick we hear whenever any tech company files an infringement suit against someone else, so take it for what it’s worth.
We should be hearing more about these cases in coming months as they progress through the court system. We will bring you more information as it develops.
[via The Next Web, Nokia]