Qualcomm increases legal pressure on Nokia

Qualcomm has filed another two patent infringement suits on handset and infrastructure maker Nokia, this time claiming Nokia is absconding with intellectual property related to the downloading over GPRS/EDGE networks and speech encoder technologies.

That brings the total number of GSM-related lawsuits brought by Qualcomm to four, in addition to numerous cases brought in the U.K., France, Italy, Germany and China. The digital content downloading suit is being heard in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas while the vocoder case is being heard in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin.

The two companies have been battling it out in domestic and international courts as well as U.S. and international regulatory bodies, fighting over every inch of intellectual property that makes up the vast patent base of cellular technology. Qualcomm’s suits this week come on the heels of two lawsuits Nokia filed against the chipset vendor in Germany and the Netherlands.

The big fireworks are expected to fly next week, though. On Monday, patent-licensing agreements between the two will expire and the two have yet to publicly announce a new agreement.