Nokia is infringing on a patent owned by German company IPCom, the U.K. High Court ruled today. IPCom will be seeking damages and an injunction banning the sale of the Finnish company's 3G phones, it said in a statement.
The ruling is a setback for Nokia, which earlier this week ended its patent litigation with Apple with a settlement that has the iPhone maker paying a lump sum and ongoing royalties to the Finnish company.
But unlike the battle with Apple, the battle with IPCom is not over. Nokia disagrees with the Court's view that the patent in question is valid, and that some of its older products may have infringed on it, and the company intends to appeal that part of the decision, a spokesman said via e-mail.
Nokia is, however, happy that the court declared that its current products do not infringe the patent, which also means that there can be no injunction against them, it said.
Nokia has also filed its arguments against this patent at the European Patent Office, which will rule on its validity at a later date, according to the company.
The patent is related to how phones connect to congested mobile networks, according to IPCom.
Nokia has so far "refused to agree to the fair license terms" offered by the company, IPCom said. Nokia, on the other hand, says IPCom's "patent infringement allegations are an aggressive tactic to put pressure on Nokia to agree to discriminatory and unrealistic licensing terms."
IPCom was founded in 2007, and the company acquired a mobile patent portfolio from Bosch the same year. The portfolio includes more than 1,000 patents registered in Europe, the U.S. and Asia, most of which have been granted, according to IPCom's web site.
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