The world may think Apple has blazed a new trail in the tablet space with its much hailed iPad, but one firm that isn’t impressed by the Jobs’ mob’s originality is Nokia, who says the Cupertino, CA., company infringed on some of its patents.
So annoyed is Nokia that rival Apple may have encroached on its copyright, the Finnish phone maker is taking the case to Federal District Court, demanding that the alleged five patent breaches be examined more closely.
Both the iPad and iPhone are guilty, according to Nokia, of using patented speech and data transmission technology, as well as performance boosting, space saving antenna configurations and the use of positioning data in applications.
All we can say is that we hope Nokia can be more specific with the judge, because from where we’re sitting, the claims sound rather wishy washy.
On the other hand, with a mammoth 11,000 patents under its belt, gleaned from 20 years of R&D and some $50 billion of investment, Nokia may just have a case.
In a statement, Nokia’s legal beagle and general manager of patent licensing Paul Melin said his firm “has been the leading developer of many key technologies in mobile devices. We have taken this step to protect the results of our pioneering development and to put an end to continued unlawful use of Nokia’s innovation.”
