Nokia losing the Smartphone battle with Apple, Tries to extract Patent Revenue by Suing

Nokia has been losing marketshare,brand appeal  and pricing power in the mobile phone market since it reached its peak with Motorola self destructing.After that it has been a downhill story for the company as you can read in my earlier posts. Now it seems that the Company has already realized that it is a low probability event to win back its  mobile phone marketshare . Instead its trying to extract patent revenue from the winners. Apple is The Company to beat in the Smartphone market with the iconic iPhone.Nokia is trying to instead extract money  by suing its rivals since it can’t make too much money by building products  through it patents.These patent battles are extremely complex with both companies having a huge number of patents to fight with.Usually leads to a settlement after years of litigation.Mostly lawyers get rich.

Nokia broadens legal row with Apple to include iPad – Reuters

Nokia Oyj, the world’s top handset maker, broadened its patent fight with Apple Inc on Friday to include the iPad, deepening the bitter legal disputes between the two smartphone rivals.

The firms turned to the courts in the last year as Nokia battles Apple, which only entered the cellphone business in 2007, but has taken a sizeable share of the fat-margined, fast-growing smartphone market.

The Finnish firm, on the other hand, has shed market share in smartphones along with margins and stunned investors last month by delaying its new software upgrade for phones, seen as key in its struggle with Apple.

Nokia on Friday filed a complaint in the Federal District Court in the Western District of Wisconsin, alleging Apple’s iPhone and iPad 3G products infringe five of its patents.

“Apple is continuing to seek a free ride on the back of Nokia patents,” said a Nokia spokesman.

The patents have not been covered in Nokia’s previous legal actions against Apple, and relate to antenna technologies, technologies for enhanced speech and data transmission, and to using positioning data in applications.

“By moving the litigation to another state Nokia is making another move in the complex game of intellectual property chess it is playing with Apple,” said Ben Wood, research director at CCS Insight.

“On this occasion it is interesting to see it choosing patent areas such as antenna design where it has developed competence over many years,” Wood said.