“Apple on Tuesday filed an antitrust lawsuit against Acacia Research Corporation and Conversant Intellectual Property Management, alleging that the two ‘patent assertion entities’ have colluded with Nokia ‘to extract and extort exorbitant revenues unfairly and anticompetitively from Apple’ and other companies,” Thomas Claburn reports for The Register. “The lawsuit comes a week after Apple was ordered to pay Conversant subsidiary Core Wireless Licensing $7.3m for infringing on two mobile communications patents.”
“According to the complaint, Acacia and its subsidiaries have sued Apple more than 40 times in the US and abroad, while Conversant and its subsidiaries have sued Apple more than two dozen times. At least a dozen of these patent infringement claims have been based on Nokia patents,” Claburn reports. “But Apple contends that in supporting Acacia’s and Conversant’s patent claims, Nokia has violated commitments made to license standard essential patents (‘SEPs’) under fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory (‘FRAND’) terms.”
“Nokia’s failure to compete in the mobile phone market led it to seek revenue through litigation, Apple argues in its complaint,” Claburn reports. “‘Unable to compete with innovative companies such as Apple – which had developed a revolutionary hardware and software platform – Nokia quickly transformed itself,’ the complaint says. ‘It changed from a company focused on supplying cell phones and other consumer products to a company bent on exploiting the patents that remain from its years as a successful cell phone supplier.'”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Nokia et al. are jokes.
As for Nokia’s “failing” cell phone business, make that “failed.” Past tense.
This is all part of an elaborate patent licensing fan dance.
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Nokia sues Apple in Germany and the US for infringement of Nokia patents – December 21, 2016