Wahay! Smartphone wars escalate as Nokia attacks Apple over patents again.

Back in late October, GoMo News was interested to see that Nokia was suing Apple for patent infringement. At the time I felt that making this public wasn’t the best way for Nokia to handle it, but it certainly gave the public and the press a good insight into higher workings of the mobile handset industry. And now Nokia has given us even better material, with a new volley of complaints.

What’s going on here?

First, let’s take a very brief look back to October 22nd this year. Nokia sued Apple, claiming that the creator of the iPhone had infringed 10 of Nokia’s patents. Nokia claimed that of the other 40 companies who licensed these patents, it had no problems getting its fee. But Apple weren’t playing ball.

Citing 20 years of R&D into mobile tech, at a cost of $60 billion, Nokia filed suit against Apple. Ilkka Rahnasto, Vice President, Legal & Intellectual Property at Nokia demanded compensation for its contributions to mobile technology and standards development, and claimed that APple was “attempting to get a free ride on the back of Nokia’s innovation.”

What happened then?

Nothing good as far as Nokia is concerned. On December 11th Apple sued it right back, claiming that Nokia is infringing 13 Apple patents.

All remained quiet for a while then, until…

According to Reuters, Nokia yesterday filed further complaints with the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC). The Finnish company has become even more fierce since the October suit, and has said that “virtually all of [Apples] mobile phones, portable music players, and computers” infringe on Nokia patents.

What we think?

I think this is a horrible bloody mess. Overall, Nokia is still the heavyweight world champ of mobile phones. But the champ is feeling the squeeze as competitors start crowding it. And Apple is by far and away the most threatening looking of the new contenders. As iPhone and Android take over the smartphone market, Nokia is in danger of becoming “those guys who make the cheap phones”.

It’s quite possible that Nokia’s claims are quite valid… large companies like this always maintain banks of defensive patents with which to haul one another through years and years of costly and awful legal wrangling. I’m honestly not entirely sure what Nokia hopes to achieve here.