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Tit for tat as two of the biggest players in the smartphone market get into a round after round of suing each other
It started out as a squabble between the biggest smartphone manufacturer in the world taking on what is arguably the most popular manufacturer, and now it’s starting to get nasty.
Lawyers for both Nokia and Apple must be rubbing their hands with glee at the amount of fees they can rack up as these two giants of the smartphone world engage in a war or words and lawsuits over patents for their respective handsets.
It started out in October last year when Nokia filed a suit against Apple for alleged infringements on seven of the former’s patents. Never being one to hold back, Apple upped the ante two months later and countersued Nokia for allegedly infringing on 13 of its patents. Then four days ago Apple went for the jugular and filed a request to ban all Nokia handsets from being imported into the US.
These patents are contentious and far too technical to go into detail here, but it is known that Nokia – who has long been the global leader in mobile handsets – has been losing marketshare to Apple, so there could be more to this litigation than patents.
Whatever happens, there is no way Nokia handsets will be banned from the United States, as even the bureaucratic heavy US International Trade Administration probably wouldn’t take the advice of some aggrieved third party if there is no merit in its opinion.
Like any court case, these suits will probably end up in court for years, or some form of compensation will be settled between them. What you can be sure of though, is as these smartphones get smarter, and the technology in them increases, more suits are bound to occur
