UPDATE: June 14, 2011: The suit has ended with Apple agreeing to pay Nokia a one-time fee and ongoing royalties for licenses of its patents.
UPDATE: March 25, 2011: The International Trade Commission ruled that Apple did not violate any Nokia patents.
The answer comes in two parts, the first about the iPhone, the second the iPad.
Nokia vs. the iPhone
Nokia is one of the largest manufacturers of cell phones in the world, and has historically had string sales in many parts of the cell phone market. But in the years since Apple debuted its cell phone, the iPhone has eaten into the overall market, especially the lucrative smartphone market.
In October 2009, Nokia concluded that Apple was achieving some of its success with the iPhone using patents owned by Nokia and not paying for the rights to them. As a result, Nokia sued Apple, charging 10 counts of patent infringement, seeking financial compensation. The patents Nokia claimed Apple was infringing include, according to Nokia:
- "technologies fundamental to making devices which are compatible with one or more of the GSM, UMTS (3G WCDMA), and wireless LAN standards
- wireless data
- speech coding
- security
- encryption."
In December 2009, Apple responded by suing Nokia, charging that Nokia was infringing on 13 Apple patents.
In late December 2009, Nokia expanded the scope of the complaint, bringing it outside the U.S. courts and asking the International Trade Commission (ITC) to investigate and potentially ban import of virtually all Apple products, since Nokia then claimed that they infringed its patents.
In January 2010, Apple responded by filing a complaint with the International Trade Commission charging that because Nokia is infringing its patents, its products should be banned from import.
As of this writing (July 2010), the ITC has not ruled on either complaint.
Nokia iPad Lawsuit
In May 2007, after the successful launch of the iPad and iPad 3G, Nokia filed a new lawsuit, this time claiming that the iPad 3G infringes five of its patents related to wireless data connections (the iPad 3G has an always-on 3G cellular data connection).
For links to those five patents, read this article.
It remains to be seen whether this is simply a case of business rivals suing each other as competitive strategy or whether actual patent infringement may lead to a halt in sales of Apple or Nokia products.
