Nokia files new patent infringement lawsuits against Apple in the US and Europe

Nothing says "we're back in the mobile space" better than a good old patent lawsuit. At least that's what Nokia seems to think. Now that the brand's re-entry into the mobile world has been confirmed countless times by company officials for 2017, Nokia is back at doing something else it hasn't in a while: suing Apple.

Today the Finnish company announced that it's filed patent infringement lawsuits against Apple in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, as well as the Regional Courts in Dusseldorf, Mannheim and Munich in Germany. Across all these actions, Nokia claims Apple has infringed 32 of its patents, covering display, user interface, software, antenna, chipsets, and video coding technologies.

The official press release on the matter unfortunately doesn't go into more details, so we don't yet know exactly how Apple is supposedly infringing these patents. Nokia says that since agreeing to a license covering "some" of its patents in 2011, Apple "has declined subsequent offers made by Nokia to license other of its patented inventions which are used by many of Apple's products" - and that's the reason for these new lawsuits.

Nokia's head of Patent Business, Ilkka Rahnasto, had this to say about the company's complaints:

Through our sustained investment in research and development, Nokia has created or contributed to many of the fundamental technologies used in today's mobile devices, including Apple products. After several years of negotiations trying to reach agreement to cover Apple's use of these patents, we are now taking action to defend our rights.

And being in the news alongside Apple probably won't hurt Nokia's efforts to be once again recognized as a player in the mobile world either. Expect Nokia to file further actions against Apple in other jurisdictions in the future.

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