As cell phone maker Nokia (News - Alert) prepares to raise revenue from its patents, the company has filed several patent infringement lawsuits in the U.S. and Germany. According to the International multimedia news agency, Reuters, the Finnish cell phone maker has filed lawsuits against HTC (News - Alert), Research In Motion (RIM) and ViewSonic.
As per the report, Nokia’s lawsuits in Germany cover 45 hardware and software patents, ranging from power management to data encryption technologies against HTC, Canadian rival RIM and tablet-maker ViewSonic.
In the United States, Nokia’s patent infringement suit is against HTC and ViewSonic. The company has also filed a complaint to the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) against HTC, wrote Reuters (News - Alert) reporter Tarmo Virki.
This is a departure for a company who had an alliance with HTC when it had fought alongside the Taiwanese company in patent battles against German patent firm, IPCom.
In an email statement to Reuters, HTC said it would not comment on the legal action until its lawyers had seen the filings. However, "HTC has been a licensee of Nokia on wireless essential patents since 2003. We are waiting to receive a complaint," HTC told Reuters.
According to the Reuters report, Nokia's smartphone patent lawsuits come on the same day a Germany court finds Microsoft (News - Alert) had infringed Motorola Mobility's patents. The court has ordered the software giant to remove its popular Xbox 360 gaming consoles and Windows 7 operating system software from the German market.
The report indicates that Nokia has one of the widest patent portfolios in the industry, along with Ericsson and Qualcomm (News - Alert). The company has also seemingly gone through two major legal battles over the past years – One against Qualcomm and then against Apple.
In its complaint against HTC, Nokia said the Taiwanese company has infringed on nine of its patents. As a result, wrote Virki, it has asked for the HTC Sensation 4G and Inspire 4G and eight other models of mobile telephones and two tablets to be banned from sale in the United States.
In federal court in Delaware, Nokia accused HTC of infringing on the same nine patents and adding nine additional patents, including technology for adjusting across time zones. In the same court, Nokia also accused tablet maker ViewSonic of infringing on 17 patents, according to Virki’s report, many of them the same patents that Nokia accused HTC of infringing on.