The battle over intellectual property in the smartphone world got appreciably more fierce today as Nokia has announced it is suing HTC, RIM and Viewsonic in both the United States and Germany over 45 “non-standard” hardware and software patents pertaining to antenna design, power management, software multitasking and more.
According to Louise Pentland, chief legal officer at Nokia, “[We] are a leader in many technologies needed for great mobile products,” said “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.”
The timing of these lawsuits is likely meant to bolster settlement influx for the Q2 2012 period, since Nokia had its worst-ever quarter in Q1. If they prevail — and because they are proprietary patents, it will be more difficult to do so — Nokia could end up a much wealthier company by the end of it. In all likelihood, however, there may not be resolution for years, we’ve seen with both the Google-Oracle case and the ongoing Samsung-Apple dispute.
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