14 DAY TRIAL // Nokia filed a number of lawsuits against smartphone giant Apple for allegedly infringing no less than 32 technology patents. Nokia has filed suits in courts in Munich, Dusseldorf and Mannheim, Germany, as well as the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas.
The report by Reuters shows that the lawsuits cover patents for displays, user interfaces, software, antennas, chipsets, and even 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 representatives recently stated. Nokia thus claims that Apple takes advantage of more patents than it initially agreed to pay for.
Apple accuses PAEs and Nokia of extortion
Nokia’s lawsuits come as a result of Apple’s decision to take legal action against Acacia Research Corp and Conversant Intellectual Property Management Inc, both PAEs accused of partnering with Nokia to extract revenue unfairly from Apple.
Apple reps say that Nokia distributed its patents to Acacia, in order to avoid directly licensing them. The standard-essential patents had been used across the industry and are licensed under the FRAND terms, which limit the fees that companies pay for taking advantage of the patents.
Back in 2011, Nokia reached an agreement with Apple under which the latter had to pay a one-time fee to Nokia and then regular royalties in the future. However, Apple is now claiming that Acacia is “conspiring with Nokia in a scheme to diffuse and abuse [standard essential patents] and, as the PAEs and Nokia fully intended, monetize those false promises by extracting exorbitant non-FRAND royalties in way Nokia could not.”
Acacia has reportedly sued Apple in the US over forty times and also targeted other companies, like HTC, in Europe. In 2015, Acacia managed to get an injunction against HTC in Germany, as part of a Deutsche Telekom lawsuit.