Qualcomm Says Nokia Infringed 12 PatentsQualcomm Says Nokia Infringed 12 Patents

LONDON — Qualcomm Inc. has filed patent infringement allegations against Nokia Corporation and Nokia Inc. in a federal court in San Diego claiming the phone maker has infringed eleven of its patents and one owned by its fully owned SnapTrack subsidiary.

The suit revolves around intellectual property said to be essential for the manufacture or use of GSM, GPRS and EDGE cellular standards. Qualcomm claims Nokia is infringing its patents by making or selling products in the U.S. that comply with the GSM family of standards, and is seeking injunctions to stop future sales as well as damages.

Late last month, Nokia was one of six companies that filed separate complaints against Qualcomm with the European Commission for allegedly withholding IP related to third generation W-CDMA mobile technology.

Six of the patents in the complaint against Nokia are also the basis of legal action Qualcomm started in July 2005 against Broadcom Corporation. This is also scheduled to be heard in the federal court in San Diego.

Louis Lupin, Qualcomm’s general counsel and a senior vice president of the company, said in a statement: “We have been discussing a number of issues with Nokia for some time, including the fact that we have essential GSM patents for which Nokia is not licensed, and we are disappointed that this has resulted in litigation."

Lupin said until recently Qualcomm “had been led to believe that these issues might be resolved cooperatively and amicably. However, it now appears that a cooperative resolution of these issues is quite unlikely and we must move forward with the litigation in order to protect our rights and to get these issues resolved."