Legal battles, at least in world of computing and technology, rarely cease to amaze. Nokia has taken an aggressive stance against HTC as it believes the Taiwanese company infringes on its patents.
And although the UK High Court recently found the HTC One Mini to be infringing a number of Nokia patents and decided to ban the sales of the smartphones in the country, the UK court of appeal granted a stay on the injunction last week.
While HTC was happy with the decision to allow the sales of the device in the UK, Nokia has commented on the stay and how it plans to continue to pursue legal action against its competitor.
This report has Nokia sharing its thoughts on the proceedings:
“The UK Court of Appeal has stayed the injunction until a full appeal hearing next year and Nokia welcomes the Court’s invitation for the parties to expedite this. It is unfortunate that the stay means that HTC can continue to benefit from its unauthorized and uncompensated use of Nokia innovations.”
The Finnish company also revealed that it would sue HTC for infringing patents in more countries around the world, including major markets like France, Germany and Italy:
“Nokia began its actions against HTC in 2012, with the aim of ending HTC’s unauthorised use of Nokia’s proprietary innovations and has asserted more than 50 patents against HTC in France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, UK and US.”
As things stand HTC has already been found guilty of infringing on various Nokia patents in many countries, and the Finnish phone maker has also filed a second complaint against the Taiwanese firm at the US International Trade Commission.
All Comments
Now if only Apple or Samsung had somehow infringed on it’s patents. I guess HTC not diving into Windows Phone hard enough was bad Karma.
Both will be careful not too, but you never know. By the way, this is clearly Nokai talking (or what will be left of it after the takeover next year), not Microsoft. But it shows that they are serious about their patent usage after they let go of their devices and services unit.