Nokia makes patent claims against Qualcomm’s FLO, BREW

Nokia filed its second U.S. countersuit this weekend in its ongoing legal battle over intellectual property, this time claiming Qualcomm’s BREW content delivery platform and its MediaFLO mobile TV technology.

In its filing with U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, Nokia claimed that six of its implementation patents were central to the operations of both technologies. The patents are related to maintaining broadcast quality of service in the case of MediaFLO and enabling content downloads for BREW, Nokia said.

“This is another example of where Qualcomm has effectively copied Nokia’s innovations,” Nokia Chief Technology Officer Tero Ojanperä said in a statement. “We believe that, for MediaFLO to evolve and for BREW to remain viable, Qualcomm needs access to these and many other patented Nokia inventions.”

The lawsuit is Nokia’s second in response to 11 patent claims Qualcomm has made against Nokia after negotiations over the companies GSM and W-CDMA cross licensing agreements failed to produce a new deal before April 9, when their previous agreement expired. While Nokia and Qualcomm are ostensibly still negotiating behind closed doors, they’ve taken their fight to the courtrooms, trying to file new patent claims against each other while simultaneously trying to invalidate the patents of its competitors.

Qualcomm filed four patent infringement lawsuits against Nokia in the U.S. relating to technologies and techniques as varied as downloading over GSM/GPRS network to speech encoding. Nokia’s other lawsuit, filed in Wisconsin, is related to roaming technology and direct conversion processes that reduce the size and power consumption of chipsets.

Qualcomm Europe President Andrew Gilbert told Reuters that Qualcomm expected the countersuits, saying counterclaims are a typical tactic as companies try to work through a legal dispute. The legal battle has begun to weigh over the companies, but Qualcomm may have more pressing concerns. The U.S. International Trade Commission last week imposed a ban on new 3G phones imported into the U.S. after it found in favor of rival chipset maker Broadcom in a patent dispute between the two companies. Qualcomm and its handset partners--as well as the operators who buy the finished phones--are appealing the ban though it won’t have immediate effect. The ban does not affect EV-DO or W-CDMA handsets that are currently sold in the U.S., only new models.