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Apple strikes back at Nokia suit

by on14 December 2009

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All your technology belongs to Jobs' Mob


Apple's
legal team has decided that attack is the best form of defence in its case with Nokia. The Finnish telco had sued Jobs' Mob claiming that the fruit themed toy maker had nicked some of its ideas. Now Apple has countersued claiming Nokia had breached 13 patents which sprang fully formed from the genius of Steve Jobs.

Apple vice president Bruce Sewell said in a brief statement said other companies must compete with us by inventing their own technologies, not just by stealing ours. Nasty words which probably would never have been spoke had not Nokia in October dared to say that Apple had stolen 10 Nokia mobile phone technology patents with the iPhone.

Nokia's patents cover "wireless data, speech coding, security and encryption” and are infringed by all Apple iPhone models shipped since the iPhone was introduced in 2007. At the time Ilkka Rahnasto, deputy head of Nokia's legal department, accused Apple at the time of "attempting to get a free ride on the back of Nokia's innovation." Obviously this explains the wording of Sewell's comment above.

It also might be the inspiration for a comment in the court documents that says that “Nokia is trying to buoy a sinking position in the mobile telephone market by getting its hands on iPhone technology and charging "exorbitant" fees for patented technology allegedly intrinsic to industry standards”. We would have thought that charging huge wodges of cash for technology would be a glass house that Apple would not want to throw stones in. Apple claimed that the only reason Nokia was suing was that it could not make money these days.

"Nokia has been attempting to use its allegedly standards-essential patents to help regain what Nokia has lost in the marketplace," the court papers say.

Actually all that sort of rhetoric will be ignored by a court and is probably for the newspapers. What will probably happen is that both sides will come to an arrangement and neither side will tell the media. However Nokia seems to have miffed Jobs' Mob by making its complaints about the iPhone's lack of originality public.
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