|
Nokia's lawsuits, filed in courts in Dusseldorf, Mannheim and
Munich, Germany, and the U.S. District Court for the Eastern
District of Texas, cover patents for displays, user interfaces,
software, antennas, chipsets and video coding.
"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," Nokia said in a
statement.
Apple on Tuesday had taken legal action against Acacia Research
Corp <ACTG.O> and Conversant Intellectual Property Management
Inc [GEGGIM.UL], accusing them of colluding with Nokia to
extract and extort exorbitant revenues unfairly from Apple.
"We’ve always been willing to pay a fair price to secure the
rights of patents covering technology in our products," said
Apple spokesman Josh Rosenstock. "Unfortunately, Nokia has
refused to license their patents on a fair basis and is now
using the tactics of a patent troll to attempt to extort money
from Apple by applying a royalty rate to Apple’s own inventions
they had nothing to do with."
Acacia and Conversant did not immediately respond to requests
for comment, and Nokia was not immediately available to comment
on the Apple lawsuit.
The legal action by Nokia and Apple appear to mark a revival of
the "smartphone patent wars" that began five years ago, when
Apple filed a series of patent infringement cases against
Samsung Electronics <005930.KS> around the world, with wins and
losses on both sides.
Apple's lawsuit against Acacia, Conversant and Nokia was filed
only one day after Ottawa-based Conversant named Boris Teksler
as its new chief executive. He had worked as Apple's director of
patent licensing and strategy from 2009 to 2013, the latter half
of his tenure overlapping with the lawsuits against Samsung.
Acacia is a publicly traded patent licensing firm based in
Newport Beach, California. One of its subsidiaries sued Apple
for patent infringement and was awarded $22 million by a Texas
jury in September.
Similarly, Conversant, which claims to own thousands of patents,
announced last week that a Silicon Valley jury had awarded one
of its units a $7.3 million settlement in an infringement case
against Apple involving two smartphone patents.
Nokia, once the world's dominant cellphone maker, missed out on
the transition to smartphones triggered by Apple's introduction
of the iPhone in 2007.
The Finnish company sold its handset business to Microsoft Corp
<MSFT.O> two years ago, leaving it with its telecom network
equipment business and a bulging portfolio of mobile equipment
patents.
But this year, Microsoft sold its Nokia-feature phone business
to a new company called HMD Global.
Nokia agreed to a 10-year licensing deal with HMD, which
continues to market low-cost Nokia phones and plans to introduce
new Nokia smartphone models next year.
(Additional reporting by Supantha Mukherjee in Bengaluru and
Stephen Nellis in San Francisco; Editing by Jonathan Oatis and
Lisa Shumaker)
[© 2016 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2016 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
 |
|
