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Qualcomm opens second front in patent war with Nokia |
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by Stuart Corner
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Thursday, 25 May 2006 |
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Qualcomm has filed claims in the UK against Nokia alleging infringement of GSM patent rights and describing the move as a "geographical extension" of a suit filed in the USA last November.
Qualcomm gave no indication of the reason for opening a second battlefront, nor any detail of progress in the first.
The proceedings, issued in the Patents Court of the High Court of England and Wales, allege infringement of two patents by Nokia in the UK in relation to mobile devices conforming to GPRS and EDGE standards but not CDMA. As in the US litigation, Qualcomm is seeking an injunction preventing Nokia from selling the phones, and damages in relation to phones already sold.
Otherwise, Qualcomm gave little detail of the claim. When its filed its US claim in November, Qualcomm accused Nokia of "infringement of eleven of Qualcomm's patents and one patent owned by [Qualcomm subsidiary] SnapTrack". Qualcomm's lawsuit covered "patents that are essential for the manufacture or use of equipment that complies with the GSM, GPRS and EDGE cellular standards and other patents that are infringed by Nokia's products". Qualcomm however did not provide the numbers of the relevant patents.
Qualcomm at the time portrayed the move as the result of a breakdown of commercial licensing negotiations. Louis M Lupin, senior vice president and general counsel of Qualcomm, said: "We have been discussing a number of issues with Nokia for some time, including the fact that we have essential GSM patents for which Nokia is not licensed, and we are disappointed that this has resulted in litigation.
"Until recently, we had been led to believe that these issues might be resolved cooperatively and amicably. However, it now appears that a cooperative resolution of these issues is quite unlikely and we must move forward with the litigation in order to protect our rights and to get these issues resolved."
This time around Qualcomm does not appear to have even raised the issue with Nokia, which issued its own press release saying "Nokia has today learned from a Qualcomm press release that Qualcomm has filed a complaint for alleged patent infringement against Nokia Corporation in the United Kingdom apparently involving two patents".
Nokia said it was "not surprised that Qualcomm has once again chosen to litigate," adding that it was "yet to receive a copy of the complaint or analyse the details," and therefore unable to comment.
Nokia then, sought to dismiss the validity of Qualcomm's claims with the totally specious argument that it was in a superior position on the numerical strength of its GSM patents alone.
"Nokia has declared 223 patents as essential to the GSM standard where the total number of declared essential patents is close to 800 making Nokia a world leader in the development of GSM/GPRS/EDGE. Qualcomm's position in GSM is clearly inferior to Nokia's."
However, if Qualcomm has just one of those 800 patents that are "essential" to GSM then, potentially, its claim against Nokia has merit.
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