If you’re a phone manufacturer, there’s nothing better than beating your competitor in the courtroom — after all that means you could potentially get a ban on the other’s products, meaning the marketplace could become a lot emptier. Nokia is seeing this potential and is pushing for a ban of HTC’s flagship One in the UK.
Of course it’s not coming out of no where, as the UK courts have found that HTC is infringing Nokia’s EP 0 998 024 patent, which has the far catchier name of ‘Modular Structure for a Transmitter and a Mobile Station’. HTC of course disputes this, given the patent is violated by the chips it got from Qualcomm, and is covered by a deal that Nokia made with Qualcomm in the US. Nokia on the other hand claims that as the chips were bought in Taiwan, that deal doesn’t apply — and thus the company is still infringing its patent.
Naturally HTC will be appealing the decision, but Nokia has already announced its intention to “seek an injuction against the import and sale of infringing HTC products in the UK as well as financial compensation.”
Nokia has been in this situation before, with BlackBerry and Apple both losing in patent infringement cases — although those ended the same way this one is likely to, with a large sum of cash going into Nokia’s coffers, rather than a ban.
It’s not just in the UK that Nokia finds itself entangled in legal battles with HTC though, with similar cases in Germany, Italy, Japan and the US continuing. In the US and Germany HTC has already been found to be infringing upon three of the 50 patents disputed.
Nokia is currently in the process of selling its devices division to Microsoft, although the company will hold on to its patents.
(Image courtesy of Gizmodo)
