Nokia has won its dispute with Research In Motion (RIM) after a year of fighting over its patent-licensing agreement.
Nokia and RIM have a history of licensing patents to one another, and agreed a cross-license in 2003 for standards-essential cellular patents.
However, in 2011, RIM claimed the licence had “extended beyond cellular essentials” and took the case to arbitration to renegotiate its deal with Nokia.
The move backfired though and the arbitrator ruled RIM was in breach of contract for manufacturing and selling WLAN (wireless local area network) products without first agreeing royalties with Nokia.
Things are now set to get worse for the BlackBerry maker, as a spokesman from Nokia told us the company has filed law suits in the UK, US and Canada “to enforce the tribunal’s ruling” and sue for breach of contract.
Computer Weekly contacted RIM to ask if it was planning to appeal or had any comment on the case, but a spokeswoman from the firm declined to comment.
The ruling comes in the same week Ericsson has decided to head to the courts over its licensing agreement with Samsung.
Ericsson and Samsung have been in negotiations for over two years about a patent deal that should see Samsung paying licenses to Ericsson. However, when the Swedish firm put the prices up, Samsung refused to pay, saying they were “prohibitively higher.”
Now, Ericsson is taking legal action and the decision will be made in a US court.
