They're at it again. Years after lawsuits between Apple and Nokia were settled, the two tech companies are suing each other
Nokia filed three lawsuits against Apple, two in Germany (Dusseldorf, Mannheim, and Munich) and another in the United States particularly at the U.S. District Court of Eastern District of Texas. The Finnish mobile network company is taking Apple back to court for infringement on 32 of its patents.
Some of the 32 patents include those involving displays, user interfaces, video coding, chipsets, software, and antennas.
Nokia issued a statement to explain the lawsuit.
"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 use by many of Apple's products."
The move is seen as retaliation for Apple's lawsuit filed against companies related to Nokia a day earlier.
The plaintiffs are actually Acacia Research Corp, Conversant Intellectual Property Management Inc, Cellular Communications Equipment, Saint Lawrence Communications, and Core Wireless Licensing.
Apple filed an antitrust case against the third-party companies for supposedly conspiring with Nokia to "obtain from Nokia thousands of patents as part of a plan to extract and extort exorbitant revenues unfairly and anticompetitively from Apple". The tech company also mentioned that other "innovative suppliers of cell phones" were also being victimized by the cohorts.
Apple spokesman Josh Rosenstock had this to say, "We've always been willing to pay a fair price to secure the rights of patents covering technology in our products. Unfortunately, Nokia refused to license their patents on a fair basis and is now using 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."
This development is reminiscent of the rivalry between Apple and Samsung which recently ended with a Supreme Court decision saying the Korean tech giant no longer has to pay Apple $399 million in damages. This follows a decision that Samsung copied three of Apple's patents.
