Apple has filed a countersuit against Nokia claiming the handset maker is infringing on 13 Apple patents, the company said in a posting on its Web site.
“Other companies must compete with us by inventing their own technologies, not just by stealing ours,” said Bruce Sewell, Apple’s general counsel and senior vice president, in a statement.
Apple did not provide additional detail on which technology patents Nokia allegedly infringed on.
The suit comes less than two months after Nokia filed a suit in a Delaware U.S. District Court alleging that Apple’s iPhone infringed on 10 of its patents. The patents related to interoperability with GSM, UMTS and wireless LAN standards, according to Nokia. The patents in question also covered wireless data, speech coding, security and encryption. Nokia claims its patents have been infringed on by all Apple iPhone models shipped since the iPhone was first introduced in 2007.
“The basic principle in the mobile industry is that those companies who contribute in technology development to establish standards create intellectual property, which others then need to compensate for,” said Ilkka Rahnasto, vice president, Legal & Intellectual Property at Nokia, in statement made in late October.
“By refusing to agree appropriate terms for Nokia’s intellectual property, Apple is attempting to get a free ride on the back of Nokia’s innovation,” Rahnasto added.
