More Work For Nokia Lawyers

Written by Adam Gosling

Friday, 04 May 2007

Nokia stands accused of violating a patent owned by a company in a country far from its Finnish home. Earlier this week the world's leading mobile phone maker, which is already embroiled in an ongoing patent punch-up with Qualcomm, found out it was in more hot water. This time with a New Zealand based company, Michael S Sutton Ltd. The Kiwi company has filed suit against Nokia in US District Court of Texas, accusing it of infringing on patented technology use to prepare message packets for data transmission. The company claims that its technology is used in numerous messaging applications on Nokia phones, including Short Messaging Service (SMS), Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) and Nokia's implementation of the Wireless Application Protocol (WAP). "In particular, the accused products include Nokia's messaging applications running on Nokia phone devices which enable MMS messages and SMS messages, including the transmitting of ring tones, Operator Logos, CLI Logos, vCards, vCalendars; Nokia's Smart Messaging Service Center applications; those applications that implement the Computer Interface to Message Distribution protocol; and Nokia's implementation of the WAP 2.0, 1.2, 1.1, and 1.0 in its phone devices," says the complaint. Nokia has said it will "actively defend: its rights according to press reports that quoted a Nokia spokeswoman. "Our legal team is looking at the refiling and will assess the merits of the case," she said. The claim relates to US patent number 5,771,238, which describes an "enhanced one way radio seven bit data network". You can see the patent here. Related news items Broadcom Enthusisam for 802.11n Wavers -06/09/2007 Sydney Airport Network Improved For APEC -03/09/2007 Handset Makers Follow Motorola -16/08/2007 Consumer Electronics Takes Interest In 802.11n -12/08/2007 Linux On Lenovo Laptops -06/08/2007 Newer news items VIPtel Telemarketers Were Misleading: ACCC -29/07/2007 ACMA Issues Biggest Ever Fine To Phone Spammer -23/07/2007 Feuding Mobile Email Players Settle Their Differences -10/07/2007 LG Goes After Quanta Again -05/07/2007 Judge Judges Optus Better Value Than Telstra -17/05/2007 Older news items Kiwi Govt Accused Of Dodgy Termination Deal -03/05/2007 Do Not Call Register Swamped -03/05/2007 Kiwi Risks Huge Legal Bill To Recover Laptop -19/04/2007 Voda NZ In Trouble Over Number Portability -16/04/2007 Qualcomm Scoffs At Nokia's Millions -13/04/2007 Tag This Now: