Nokia and Apple Set to Battle in Court Again

Nokia and Apple are set to battle in court, again, after another dispute over the alleged use of various patents by Apple. This latest round of fall outs was triggered by Apple after they started legal action against Acacia Research and Conversant Intellectual Property Management.

In what seems a little bit of a mess, Apple is claiming that Nokia have transferred patents to third parties, in order to bypass an agreement which means Nokia must license its patents to rivals under fair and reasonable terms. Apple claims that transferring patents to third parties is “anticompetitive and abusive”.

A statement from Apple, made to USA Today says;

“Unfortunately, Nokia has refused to license their patents on a fair basis and is now using the tactics of a patent troll to attempt to extort money from Apple by applying a royalty rate to Apple’s own inventions they had nothing to do with.”

Whilst Apple are not attempting to sue Nokia directly, Nokia have not taken this lightly and are suing Apple directly, claiming they have used some of their patents in Apple products and therefore owe them money. Nokia said;

“Since agreeing a license covering some patents from the Nokia Technologies portfolio in 2011, Apple has declined subsequent offers made by Nokia to license other of its patented inventions which are used by many of Apple’s products.”

This wouldn’t be the first time Apple has been taken to court over patent infringement, and it certainly won’t be the last. In the long-term, the more cases they lose, the less likely it is the courts will ever take them seriously, they are obviously not learning from their mistakes.

Just this year, Apple lost a long-running patent infringement battle to Virnetx, here is an article by inquisitr.com which explains what happened.

Do you think Apple will ever change their ways? Do you buy Apple products? Will you continue to buy them?