Nokia

Nokia and Apple may want to go toe to toe in the legal ring right now, but they're being told to wait a bit.

According to Macworld, the International Trade Commission has told both parties that it must complete its own probe, which was scheduled to take 45 days after it agreed to perform the investigation on February 22nd, then the lawsuit will presumably move forward. That's if it's still on and not settled by then, although Nokia seems determined to win it, and Apple apparently has enough bandwidth to handle two lawsuits at once.

Nokia field a complaint with the ITC last December asking them to block the import of iPhones for infringing on several of their patents. Now Apple has filed a similar argument with the ITC saying Nokia's products infringes upon some of theirs, and their products should be the ones blocked from import. The fur seems to really flying. It will be interesting to see who wins out. Hopefully it won't be Nokia.

Nokia announced a while back that they would be helping develop a refresh to the Symbian OS interface to try to help combat the iPhone by making it better suited for a touchscreen. Now they have released screenshots of what they have come up with, and they're not half bad. It's definitely a big improvement, but is it better than the iPhone? We'll let you decide how it stacks up for yourself.

Electronics manufacturer Nokia stepped up its case against Apple today by filing a complaint with the United States International Trade Commission alleging patent infringment on Apple's part in nearly all of Apple's mobile phones, portable music players and computers. The complaint accuses Apple of infringing on seven individual patents to help create features such as user interface and camera, antenna and power management technologies.

"Nokia has been the leading developer of many key technologies in small electronic devices" said Paul Melin, General Manager, Patent Licensing at Nokia. "This action is about protecting the results of such pioneering development."

When in doubt, sue the people suing you.

Apple today responded to Nokia's lawsuit which argued that all iPhones violate patents held by Nokia for GSM calling, 3G data and Wi-Fi as well as security by filing a countersuit of its own. The new complaint accuses Nokia of violating 13 Apple-held patents. Apple General Counsel Bruce Sewell also alleges that Nokia is exploiting work on products like the iPhone to maintain its status in the industry.
"Other companies must compete with us by inventing their own technologies, not just by stealing ours," he says.

Research firm Gartner issued a report on Thursday covering worldwide mobile phone sales for the third quarter of 2009. The report ranked Apple in third place for worldwide market share of smartphones, grabbing 17.1% of that market in finishing behind market leader Nokia and Research in Motion.

It's not terribly exciting or unexpected, but it's part of the due process. In its 10-K annual report (PDF) filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and posted yesterday, Apple noted that it plans to "vigorously" defend itself from a lawsuit filed last week by Nokia claiming infringement of multiple cellular and Wi-Fi patents by Apple's iPhone. Nokia's complaint alleges that these patents are essential to one or more of the GSM, UMTS and 802.11 wireless communications standards, and that the Company has the right to license these patents from plaintiff on fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory ("FRAND") terms and conditions

You can't please all the people all the time. In a suit filed today in U.S. District Court, Nokia claims that Apple has violated 10 of Nokia's wireless technology patents. According to The Unofficial Apple Weblog, the company says the patents "relate to technologies fundamental to making devices," that are compatible with the GSM, UMTS, or 3G WCDMA, and wireless LAN standards.