Apple hits back at Nokia lawsuit

Back in October you may remember some publicity regarding Nokia suing Apple over the infringement of 10 patents.

Nokia, the worlds largest mobile phone manufacturer, has had a market share dip due to its newest rival Apple inc. And when the figures for this came out Nokia filed a lawsuit against Apple claiming at they are in breach of their filed patents.

Well now Apple has hit back and filed their own countersuit against Nokia and Apple claim Nokia is in breach of 13 of their own patents. Does this sound like children fratching to you? or is it just me?

In its 79 page lawsuit, Apple accuses Nokia of refusing to license its ‘intellectual’ property – which is crucial for the functioning of a mobile phone – “on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory terms”.

Two of the patents Apple proposes as infringement on Nokia’s behalf is the ability to connect your mobile phone to a PC via USB and the way in which users can scroll and zoom in on documents via the UI.

Before Nokia had filed a lawsuit there was supposed to be an agreement in which Apple would pay for a license which would allow them to use technology developed by Nokia in the iPhone.

In Apples mind Nokia is just jealous and is doing this because they have been unable to produce a decent mobile phone for the mass market which would sell well. Yikes, talk about hitting them where it hurts!

In my opinion Nokia is losing out at the moment – figures speak for themselves as at the start of the year Nokias share for the smartphone market was 41% and it has dropped to 35% :/.

And I also think that Nokia should not be doing this (or should not have started it) as they were the ones who both failed on creating a proper license contract and also authorized Apple to use pre-developed technologies (although not on paper).

Who knows where this will go now, however I would love to hear your views on the subject.

Send some comments in and lets get a discussion.