“By refuring to agree appropriate terms for Nokia’s intellectual property, Apple is attempting to get a free ride on the back of Nokia’s innovation.” This statement from Nokia sets the tone for its offensive against Apple.

Nokia today sued Apple for infringing its patents relating to GSM, 3G and WLAN technologies. The world’s largets handset vendor with a global marketshare of about 38 percent claims that the iPhone uses its patented technology, for which Apple has not paid any licence fee.

One would argue why Nokia would wait for over two years (the first iPhone was introduced in June 2007) but Nokia’s statement indicates that the two companies were in talks regarding the licence payments and they could not come to an agreement.

According to Nokia, the 10 patents in question have become industry standards and Nokia has entered into licence agreements with approximately 40 companies that include all leading mobile device vendors.

It’d be interesting to see how Mr Jobs wriggles out of this one as this time it ain’t a tiny fly-by-night operator suing Apple but a telecom giant that has been severely hurt by Apple’s revolutionary device.

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