Nokia accuses Russian blogger of espionage

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Despite joking a while back that it would not pull an Apple and set loose the bloodthirsty legal beagles over the leak of its N8 phone to a Russian website, Nokia seems to have changed its mind, and is indeed legally pursuing Eldar Murtazin, the blogger who laid the phone bare for all to gawp at.
Nokia has demanded Murtazin return the phone, and has even gone as far as enlisting the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs to get the phone back, purportedly because the blogger didn’t respond the first time after Nokia said ‘pretty please’. If we were in Murtazin’s moccasins right now, we’d be quaking with fear.
Perhaps hoping to jump the Russian espionage bandwagon, Nokia claims all this new drama over something it originally said wasn’t worth causing drama about comes down to – yep, you’ve guessed it – corporate espionage.
“This is not about attacking bloggers or people who give critical reviews of our products,” Nokia argued. “Whether Mr. Murtazin’s actions were as a blogger, or whether he is acting in the capacity of a consultant in order to provide information to his clients [competing with Nokia] is an open question.”

Of course, the fact Mr. Murtazin’s review was less than flattering to Nokia has nothing to do with it. Ehem.
Magnanimously, Nokia says it is not trying to get the blog, Mobile-Review, shut down, because that would be, er, corporate censorship, but it refused to divulge details about whether Murtazin would be charged with phone theft.
Meanwhile, the Russian blogger says he has been trying to contact Nokia incessantly over the past couple of months, and that he is in no way withholding the phone from the firm. He also said he had “nothing to hide” when it came to espionage charges and that having not signed an NDA (non-disclosure agreement) he could publish whatever he liked. Which is true.
Nokia certainly doesn’t have a very good track record at keeping its phones under lock and key, with several high profile leaks having occurred in the past, sometimes months before the phones actually ship. Luckily, Nokia doesn’t appear to be too harsh on its actual employees, unlike another fruit themed phone maker we all know.
We’ll keep you posted as this story develops.