In a bid to gain edge over the other in the smartphone market, Nokia has once again filed a lawsuit against Apple accusing the company of patent infringement.
The market leader in mobile manufacturing, Nokia, has filed the case in the Delaware court. As per it, Apple has infringed seven patents held by Nokia in various products. Earlier Nokia had filed a similar case against Apple before the International Trade Commission accusing Apple of violating the Intellectual Property Rights related to cameras, iPhones and MacBook portables. Nokia had filed this case in October last year. Above all, Nokia has also asked a federal court in the US to simply ban various Apple products like the iPhone, iPod and Mac lines in the US market.
However, Apple had hit back by counter attacking Nokia’s first accusation by filing a countersuit on December 11 claiming that Nokia has infringed as many as 13 patents held by Apple. “Other companies must compete with us by inventing their own technologies, not just by stealing ours,” Bruce Sewell, Apple’s General Counsel had said in a statement. Nokia is supposed to file its answer by February 8, 2010.
People related with the handsets industry expect the legal battle to carry on for a long time causing troubles for both the players. The legal tussle between the two smartphone makers has risen because the two giants are hell bent to grab the numero uno position in the particular segment.
Though Nokia is still the market leader in the smartphone category, its sales have fallen drastically after Apple’s iPhone was made available to the consumers. And now as that the company is looking forward to sell 500 million phones in 2010 including its products in the smartphone segment, Apple may well turn out to be a major threat for it.