Qualcomm sues Nokia in U.K.

Qualcomm is again taking its intellectual property to the courtroom, announcing today it is filing another lawsuit against Nokia regarding its GSM technology, this time in a U.K. court.

Qualcomm sued Nokia in U.S. District Court in November, claiming Nokia infringed on two patents held by Qualcomm related to GSM, GPRS and EDGE technologies. Qualcomm is essentially claiming that key components of CDMA technology were used in the creation of GSM’s data variants, GPRS and EDGE, and by building GPRS and EDGE phones Nokia is infringing on Qualcomm’s intellectual property. Last November, Nokia conceded the possibility that Qualcomm’s patents may pertain to GSM portfolio, but it claimed Qualcomm had refused to negotiate over any possible license agreement.

Now Qualcomm is asking the Patents Court of the High Court of England to hear its case, asking the tribunal for an injunction on all future sales of Nokia’s GSM devices, the majority of the leading handset makers portfolio, as well as the damages for all previous data-enabled GSM devices sold, which would account for millions of phones in Britain alone. Meanwhile Nokia is also changing its message. Instead of trying to bring Qualcomm to the negotiating table, it’s now claiming it stands behind its own patent portfolio.

Without commenting on the details of the court filing, Nokia said it holds 223 of about 800 worldwide essential patents on GSM technology, and any proprietary intellectual property Qualcomm has is inferior to its own work on the standard. Nokia also said it is “not surprised that Qualcomm has once again chosen to litigate,” and left it that.

Last October, Nokia joined a consortium of GSM vendors attacking Qualcomm for its licensing practices, claim the CMDA technologist was using its patent leverage to land chipset deals from its competitors. The consortium took their complaints to the European Commission asking them to put a stop to the alleged practices.