Beat That Dead Horse: Nokia Sues RIM Over Three More Patents.

by at 8:39 am July 11, 2012


If there’s one thing RIM didn’t need to deal with at this stage in the game, it’s a lawsuit. Two months ago, RIM (along with HTC and Viewsonic) were sued by Nokia over a total of seven patents in three different German cities. Today, FOSS Patents alerts us that Nokia is adding three additional patent infringement claims to RIM’s ongoing litigation in the Munich I Regional Court in Germany specifically.

The patents:

  • EP1474750: method and system for storing and transferring multimedia tags
  • EP08040461: method and apparatus for updating the software of a mobile terminal using the air interface
  • EP1148681: method for transferring resource information

According to FOSS Patent’s Florian Mueller, Nokia’s patent portfolio is much stronger than RIM’s, and because of it, Nokia will “win this sooner or later.

As for RIM’s future, it’s bleaker than ever despite continuos positive interviews and remarks made by CEO Thorstein Heins. One thing that worries us is the patent troll stance RIM could take if BlackBerry 10 fails to actually get released (or fails to gain any traction) and the company’s plans to sell of parts or all of its assets also go by the wayside. Meuller says that a new ITC filing made earlier this week seems to indicate RIM is more actively pursing this patent troll idea but stops short of elaborating. That said, Mueller says that a new post highlighting this very subject will be the topic of his next post.

If RIM ends up having to pay Nokia millions of dollars from a German loss alone, it won’t likely be the “final nail” so to speak, just another piece of straw on the camel’s back. Eventually, though, the camel’s back will break. And if Nokia takes the new patent infringement claims global, RIM’s accounts have a lot more to worry about.

Of course, the irony of this all is that Nokia themselves aren’t in the best of situations. Their share price continues to sink even with downright awesome devices like the Lumia 800/900 currently floating around the globe. At least in Nokia’s case they have strong (financial) support from Microsoft and already have the first big step out of the way — launching a new, first-gen product. RIM on the other hand has yet to cross the threshold from lab to consumer. And now this. Nokia certainly isn’t making it any easier.

Source: Foss Patents | Via: TechRadar

   
  • Chip Eastham

    It’s fine to credit FM with his reporting on an amended complaint, but when you use his opinion (with apparent approval) for the proposition that “Nokia will win this sooner or later,” FM’s track record as a poor prognosticator (and his ties to interested party Microsoft) should be addressed, at least by providing a second (preferably independent) commentator for balance. There is no dearth of recent articles about the relative speeds at which Nokia and RIM are plummeting.