Blackberry has taken Nokia to the court over patent infringement allegations. The Finnish mobile company has been accused of using a number of Blackberry's inventions without permission and royalty.
According to BBC, the Canadian firm has claimed that several of Nokia's transmitters and software programs have been using its intellectual property. The allegations include usage of data transmission technologies such as 4G and other types of mobile networks. As per court documents, Blackberry is seeking payment from Nokia rather than trying to block Nokia from using the 11 patents any further. The case is due in the US District for the District of Delaware (Wilmington).
A spokeswoman from Nokia has confirmed that the company is well aware of the complaint and they will take whatever steps are necessary to defend their rights after studying the claims. The lawsuit includes claims that Nokia was already aware of the patents' existence, as they tried to buy some of them before Blackberry acquired them and there are documents proving these legal disputes.
According to Bloomberg, Blackberry's CEO John Chen is finding new routes to earn revenue out of Blackberry's technology as smart phone sales are leading to zilch. Blackberry was a part of the group named Rockstar Consortium that bought patents from Nortel, a company which went bankrupt.
Nortel Networks Corp. was the company whose technology patents were also persuaded by Nokia, only to find their bid failing in 2009. Nortel's patents were divided among the members of the Rockstar Consortium comprising of Apple Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Blackberry. Blackberry reportedly bought the patents for $4.5 billion in 2011.
Blackberry and Nokia have also clashed in the recent past. In 2012, Nokia had filed a patent infringement lawsuit against the sale of Blackberry phones in US, UK and Canada. Both the companies have currently stopped designing mobile phones of their own brands and have started licensing the right to other handset makers to use their brands.
