Files 12 patent infringements against Nokia
Days after Nokia was one of several manufacturers asked for an investigation into Qualcomm’s CDMA licensing terms, Qualcomm takes Nokia on over GSM patent rights on some USA products. Coincidence?
QUALCOMM and its wholly owned subsidiary, SnapTrack have filed suits against Nokia in federal court in San Diego for the alleged infringement of eleven of QUALCOMM’s patents and one patent owned by SnapTrack.
QUALCOMM’s lawsuit includes patents that is says “are essential” for the manufacture or use of equipment that complies with the GSM, GPRS and EDGE cellular standards and “other patents that are infringed by Nokia’s products”. Patents that are essential to a standard are those that must necessarily be infringed to comply with the requirements of the standard. QUALCOMM’s complaint states that Nokia is infringing QUALCOMM’s patents by making or selling products in the United States that comply with the GSM family of standards. QUALCOMM seeks an injunction against Nokia’s continuing sale of infringing products and monetary damages.
Louis Lugin, Qualcomm’s general counsel said the two companies have been in dicussion for “some time” over the dispute, in which it alleges Nokia is not licensed to use certain GSM patents.
“Until recently, we had been led to believe that these issues might be resolved cooperatively and amicably. However, it now appears that a cooperative resolution of these issues is quite unlikely and we must move forward with the litigation in order to protect our rights and to get these issues resolved,” he said.
Qualcomm’s view is that the GSM community, in playing catch-up with enhanced CDMA technologies, used techniques in developing GPRS and EDGE that used technology patented by Qualcomm. It says that Nokia’s GSM, GPRS and EDGE products for sale in teh US “unavoidably infringe” those patents.
QUALCOMM says it is prepared to offer licenses under its “essentia”l GSM/GPRS/EDGE patents on “fair and reasonable terms free from unfair discrimination to any company that requests one.”
What this doesn’t explain is why Qualcomm is taking this action now. There have been GSM and 2.5 GSM technologies in the US for years now, sold by Nokia and other companies. Qualcomm does not say if it considers Nokia the only GSM vendor to have infringed its patents, or if other vendors have licensed the patents referred to.
It is possible to surmise that Qualcomm has held these complaints up its sleeve until it needed to launch a counter-attack on Nokia. Nokia and Broadcom were both part of the group of companies which complained to the European authorities that Qualcomm’s CDMA licensing regime was discrimnatiry.
Another way of looking at that action is that it was a pre-emptive strike against Qualcomm’s action. Either way, it seems some long standing grudges on either side have finally come to the surface.