Less than a day after Nokia announced it’s suing Apple over numerous cases of alleged patent infringement, the Finnish company revealed it had expanded the said litigation to new courts in the United States, Europe, and Asia. More specifically, the Espoo-based tech giant has now filed complaints against Apple with courts across 11 countries. Over a quarter of these lawsuits were filed with regional courts in Germany, while Nokia is also planning to take on Apple in the United Kingdom, United States, Finland, Italy, Sweden, Spain, Netherlands, France, Hong Kong, and Japan. In total, the company has now filed 40 complaints against Apple.
As the Finnish firm explained in a press release published earlier this week, its acquisitions of NSN and Alcatel-Lucent led to Nokia owning tens of thousands of patents covering numerous solutions utilized by modern smartphones, tablets, and computers, many of which Apple is now allegedly infringing. Nokia is quick to point out how the company and its subsidiaries invested over €115 billion in research and development responsible for the said patent portfolio. Now, while Apple already agreed to some licensing deals covering a portion of this portfolio back in 2011, the company apparently refused to renegotiate these deals following Nokia’s acquisition of Alcatel-Lucent and NSN. It’s worth pointing out that Ilkka Rahnasto, chief of Nokia’s Patent Business explicitly stated how Nokia tried to negotiate with Apple for years, presumably starting negotiations as soon as the company obtained a controlling stake in NSN back in 2013. However, as Apple apparently isn’t willing to play ball, the Finnish tech giant is now opting to defend its patents in a more aggressive manner.
With that said, it’s worth pointing out how this series of lawsuits Nokia just filed against Apple are retaliation for litigation Apple recently instigated against patent assertion entities acting on Nokia’s behalf. The lawsuit filed by Apple alleged that these third parties are violating anti-competition laws by trying to milk money from Apple over patents that were already licensed back in 2011. In other words, Apple is claiming Nokia and parties representing it aren’t acting in good faith. The last patent dispute between Apple and Nokia lasted for over two years, so this one probably won’t be resolved anytime soon.