Nokia Sues HTC, RIM and ViewSonic for Patent Infringement

A new front in World Patent
War I — several, actually.

Nokia on Wednesday filed patent infringement lawsuits against HTC, Research In Motion and ViewSonic in the U.S. and Germany. All told, there are 45 patents at issue, covering everything from dual-function antennas and multimode radios to application stores and data encryption.

“Many of these inventions are fundamental to Nokia products,” Nokia’s chief legal officer Louise Pentland said today in a statement. “We’d rather that other companies respect our intellectual property and compete using their own innovations, but as these actions show, we will not tolerate the unauthorized use of our inventions.”

Presumably, the company would be quite happy to tolerate authorized ones for licensing fees that would boost its flagging quarterly numbers. Which, for Nokia, is really what this is all about: establishing a new revenue stream while awaiting broader adoption of its new Lumia Windows Phones.

Reached for comment, RIM declined to offer one.

HTC had only this to say: “HTC has been a licensee of Nokia on wireless essential patents since 2003. We are waiting to receive a complaint and won’t have any comments until our legal team has received and reviewed it.”

ViewSonic has not yet replied.