Nokia has filed a new round of complaints against Apple with the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) and with a Delaware court, the Finnish phone maker said on Tuesday.
Nokia’s latest complaints follow an initial determination in Nokia’s earlier filing, announced by the ITC on Friday, which stated that Apple hadn’t infringed on the five patents included in the case. Not surprisingly, Nokia disagrees with the ruling and is waiting to see the full details before deciding on the next steps in that case, according to a company statement.
Nokia’s second ITC complaint includes seven patents related to multitasking, data synchronization, positioning, call quality, and the use of Bluetooth accessories, Nokia said.
In addition to the two ITC complaints, Nokia has filed cases on the same patents against Apple in Delaware. There are also more cases proceeding in Germany, the U.K. and the Netherlands, some of which will come to trial in the next few months.
The two companies have been fighting it out in courts around the world since October 2009, when Nokia filed a complaint against Apple with the U.S. District Court in Delaware, alleging that Apple’s iPhone infringed on Nokia patents for GSM, UMTS and WLAN standards. Since then, the companies have filed a growing number of complaints against each other.
Apple and Nokia are far from the only ones suing each other over patents related to mobile devices. Earlier this month, Microsoft filed a lawsuit against bookseller Barnes & Noble, alleging that the Android-based Nook e-reader infringes on several Microsoft patents. On Friday, the ITC said it will review an earlier decision that found that Apple and Research In Motion did not infringe Kodak patents in their smartphones.
As the sales of smartphones, e-readers and tablets continue to grow, royalties are also becoming more valuable. If Kodak wins against Apple and RIM, the company may earn as much as US$1 billion in revenue, it reportedly said last week.
