“Wounded cellphone maker Nokia has turned on one of its former allies in the patent protection battlefield by filing lawsuits against rival smartphone maker HTC as it steps up its efforts to raise funds,” Tarmo Virki reports for Reuters.
“Nokia filed several lawsuits covering 45 hardware and software patents, ranging from power management to data encryption technologies in Germany against HTC, Canadian counterpart Research In Motion and tablet-maker ViewSonic,” Virki reports. “In the United States it filed against HTC and ViewSonic, including a complaint to U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) against HTC.”
Virki reports, “The moves follow Nokia’s comments last month that it will seek to raise more revenues from its patent portfolio… Nokia has one of the widest patent portfolios in the industry, along with Ericsson and Qualcomm. It has gone through two major legal battles over the past years, first against Qualcomm and then against Apple. ‘Nokia proved the enormous strength of its patent portfolio by getting Apple to pay up after a protracted and acrimonious battle in multiple courts,’ said patent expert and blogger Florian Mueller. ‘HTC and ViewSonic are patent lightweights compared to Apple and can’t possibly win against Nokia,’ he said.”
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