Nokia expands litigation against Apple to cover 40 patents across 11 countries

Less than a day after revealing it was suing Apple for a number of patent infringements in the U.S and Germany, Nokia has revealed it’s now expanding the scope of the suit to cover 40 patents across 11 countries.

Nokia revealed yesterday that it had filed lawsuits in the U.S. District Court for Texas’ Eastern District, in addition to regional courts in Düsseldorf, Mannheim, and Munich, relating to patents covering chipsets, displays, antennas, software, and other technologies found in devices such as the iPhone.

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The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that Nokia’s actions were in response to an Apple lawsuit filed a day earlier that accused Nokia of colluding with patent trolls and deliberately omitting a number of patents from an earlier agreement between the two firms by transferring them to other companies. Why? Well, it was part of a carefully orchestrated plan to “extract and extort exorbitant revenues unfairly and anticompetitively from Apple and other innovative suppliers of cell phones,” according to Apple’s complaint.

Now, the scope of Nokia’s lawsuits has been extended to cover patents in Finland, U.K., Italy, Sweden, Spain, Netherlands, France, Hong Kong, and Japan.

“Through our sustained investment in research and development, Nokia has created or contributed to many of the fundamental technologies used in today’s mobile devices, including Apple products,” explained Ilkka Rahnasto, head of patent business at Nokia, in a press release. “After several years of negotiations trying to reach agreement to cover Apple’s use of these patents, we are now taking action to defend our rights.”

Back in 2011, Nokia and Apple settled a two-year legal battle over license fees for patents that Nokia owned, but Nokia now says that Apple has “declined subsequent offers” that Nokia has made for Apple to license additional “patented inventions” used in Apple products.

Indeed, Nokia has bolstered its arsenal of patents considerably over the past few years, after acquiring Siemens’ stake in Nokia Siemens Networks for $2.2 billion in 2013, followed by France’s Alcatel-Lucent in a $16.6 billion deal last year.

“Built on more than EUR 115 billion invested in R&D over the past twenty years, our tens of thousands of patents cover many important technologies used in smartphones, tablets, personal computers and similar devices,” the company said.