BlackBerry files legal suit against Nokia for patent infringement

Two former smartphone giants- Nokia and BlackBerry are ready to battle it out once again- only in legal corridors this time.

Apparently, both the companies that are well past their hey days are in the middle of resurrecting their brands making the timings of the legal case sound preposterous. On 14th February, BlackBerry filed a suit with a federal court in Wilmington, Delaware, alleging Nokia of infringing on 11 patents, across a wide range of mobile networking products.

“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,” BlackBerry alleged.

Interestingly, the suit doesn’t seek to block use of its patents, instead looking to collect on damages related to the royalty fees it charges for licenses on the technologies – some of which were acquired through purchase from Nortel, after that company went bankrupt.

According to BlackBerry’s filing, Nokia had tried 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.

We will keep you posted with further legal proceedings.