Telecom Lead Europe:
Mobile phone major Nokia has filed patent suits against HTC, RIM and
Viewsonic.
The mobile phone major claims in the United States and
Germany that products from HTC, RIM and Viewsonic infringe a number of Nokia
patents.
“Nokia is a leader in many technologies needed for
great mobile products. We have already licensed our standards essential patents
to more than 40 companies. Though we’d prefer to avoid litigation, Nokia
had to file these actions to end the unauthorized use of our proprietary
innovations and technologies, which have not been widely licensed,” said
Louise Pentland, chief legal officer at Nokia.
Nokia’s patent suits include a complaint to the US
International Trade Commission (ITC) against HTC, suits against HTC and
Viewsonic in the Federal District Court of Delaware, US, against HTC and RIM in
the Regional Court in Dusseldorf, Germany and against all three companies in the
Regional Courts in Mannheim and Munich, Germany.
In total, 45 Nokia patents are in suit in one or more of the
actions.
According to Nokia, Nokia technologies are being used by the
companies to enable hardware capabilities such as 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.
“Many of these inventions are fundamental to Nokia
products. We’d rather that other companies respect our intellectual property
and compete using their own innovations, but as these actions show, we will not
tolerate the unauthorized use of our inventions,” Pentland added.
