Nokia wins patent lawsuit, halts iPhone 4 sales in the US

It should be clear by now that this article, outlived in a day, was a mere April's Fools Day joke. We're hoping you saw the funny side of it.

Nokia scored a huge point against Apple in their ongoing court battles. The US International Trade Commission ruled that the Cupertino-based company has infringed a number of Nokia patents relating to mobile phones, computers and music players and has banned the sales of the Apple products in the US.

The products in question are the iOS-running Apple iPad (both versions), iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS and the iPod Touch. Their sales within the US have been suspended indefinitely and Apple is facing a heavy fine, which is yet to be announced. Experts believe that it will be between $1 billion and $2 billion.

Apple still has the right to appeal the decision, but there have been very few prior cases, where ITC decisions have been altered.

Effectively this means that unless Apple and Nokia sign a Patent License Agreement, US citizens won't be able to buy new iOS devices until Apple comes up with solutions on their own for the patented technologies. So far both companies have refused to comment on the possibility of signing such an agreement.

There's also no saying if Nokia will try to get a similar sales ban for the Apple products in Europe.

Anyway we'll keep track on the development of the case - stay tuned for more updates. And if you were going to purchase an iOS device you might want to act swiftly or you may miss you chance for quite some time to come.

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