This actually is kind of strange. The two companies who between them, ushered in the age that saw phones become as common as peanuts, who ruled the market with an iron grip, and fell to a mere shadow of their former glory — are now gearing up to battle once again, only in courts this time. What makes it even more ridiculous, is the fact that both BlackBerry and Nokia are bang in the middle of staging a comeback of sorts by licensing their names to third parties.
Accusing Nokia of infringing upon as many as 11 patents, BlackBerry filed a lawsuit at a federal court in Wilmington, Delaware on Valentines day.
The company alleged that:
Nokia encourages and instructs customers, mobile service providers such as T-Mobile and AT&T, to purchase, deploy and use infringing products to develop and operate their LTE networks and UMTS networks.
The products named in the lawsuit include Nokia’s Flexi Multiradio base stations, radio network controllers and Liquid Radio software.
The patents in question come from Nortel. Nokia had attempted to purchase them directly from Nortel but failed. They were later bought and divided amongst a consortium of companies that included Apple, Microsoft and of course, BlackBerry.
Meanwhile, BlackBerry wants Nokia to pay damages for the unauthorized use of these patents. Interestingly, it did not say anything about stopping sale of products that deployed the allegedly stolen technology, merely focusing on the damages.
BlackBerry seeks to obtain recompense for Nokia’s unauthorized use of BlackBerry’s patented technology.
However, it refrained from specifying a particular amount. Meanwhile, whether Nokia ends up paying damages to BlackBerry or not, remains to be decided by the courts.
In the meanwhile, we leave you to ponder the strange ways in which the universe operates. Hearing about two of my once favorite brands gearing up to do battle has sort of overwhelmed me. I mean come on, Nokia Vs. BlackBerry is kind of like hearing about two grandads gearing up to duel with each other.
