Nokia accuses Apple of ‘legal alchemy’

“Nokia last week asked a federal judge to toss out Apple’s antitrust claims, saying the iPhone maker indulged in ‘legal alchemy’ when it tried to divert attention from its ‘free-riding’ of Nokia’s intellectual property,” Gregg Keizer reports for Computerworld.

“The filing last Thursday was the latest salvo in a battle that began in October 2009 when Finnish handset maker Nokia sued Apple, saying the iPhone infringed on 10 of its patents,” Keizer reports. “Apple countered in December with a lawsuit of its own that not only claimed Nokia infringed 13 of its patents, but that Nokia also violated antitrust law by legally attacking Apple after it declined to pay what it called “exorbitant royalties” and refused to give Nokia access to iPhone patents.”

Keizer reports, “It was the six non-patent claims by Apple that Nokia asked U.S. District Court Judge Gregory Sleet to throw out last week… Nokia urged Sleet to dismiss Apple’s claims. ‘Sometimes a patent dispute is just a patent dispute,’ Nokia said of its fight with Apple after licensing negotiations broke down. ‘Through what charitably could be called an attempt at legal alchemy, Apple employs revisionist history, misleading characterizations, unsupported allegations and flawed and contradictory legal theories to turn these fruitless negotiations into a multi-count federal lawsuit,’ Nokia charged.”

“Both Nokia and Apple have also filed infringement actions with the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) to block imports of each other’s phones, and in the case of Nokia’s filing, virtually every Apple hardware product, including iPods and Macs,” Keizer reports. “A separate lawsuit, which covers the patents alleged in the ITC complaint, was put on hold two weeks ago by Sleet pending the Washington D.C. agency’s ruling.”

Full article here.