Finnish handset manufacturer, Nokia Corporation (NOK) has filed additional cases against rival, HTC Corp. accusing the latter of violating three of its patents. Notably, Nokia and HTC have been engaged in legal battles for quite some time over patent disputes.
In its fresh lawsuit, Nokia claims that HTC is selling products in the U.S., which is infringing its terminal, method and computer program patents that are used for signalling tags. Espoo-based Nokia also lodged a federal suit in Southern California to stop HTC from violating its patents and has asked for unspecified damages.
The new lawsuit is the second complaint to the U.S. International Trade Commission, as Nokia had earlier filed cases against HTC for using its power saving technology, which saves battery life when connected to a network. Nokia has filed similar cases against HTC in the U.K. and Germany.
Nokia further argues that HTC has not put a halt to its practices in spite of the Lumia developer winning the case in the German court. Instead, HTC has shifted the accountability to its suppliers. These three cases are in addition of the 22 lawsuits that Nokia has filed against HTC in Germany, alleging that a number of HTC’s products infringe Nokia’s patents.
Nokia has the strongest patent portfolio in the wireless industry and has spent almost $62 billion in research and development in the last two decades. Furthermore, the company has patent licensing agreements with around 41 mobile handset manufacturers, who use its patents. Nokia receives a healthy royalty from this licensing agreement and would give its best to protect its interest as the company struggles to regain smartphone leadership.
Earlier, Nokia had also charged Apple Inc. (AAPL) and Research in Motion Limited. (BBRY) with a patent case and has been successful in winning it. Nevertheless, Nokia has suffered some setback in its attempt to protect its patent. The company lost some patent lawsuits against HTC in Germany over the use of Google Inc.’s (GOOG) play app and content store client app in the Android-based devices.
Nokia still has some cases impending against HTC, its main Windows phone rival. Yet, we believe the company will continue to fight the Taiwanese handset manufacturer to vend off competition in the Windows based smartphone space.
Nokia currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).
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