Apple sues Nokia over 13 patents

On Dec.11, Apple, maker of the iPhone, filed a counter-suit claiming that Nokia is infringing its technology patents. Nokia states it has agreements with about 40 firms

In the lawsuit (available here, as PDF file), Apple accuses Nokia of refusing to license its intellectual property "on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory terms". As the Guardian notes, Apple's claim quotes Anssi Vanjoki, the Finnish company's executive vice president and general manager of multimedia from the firm's GoPlay event in 2007, at which he said "if there is something good in the world, we copy with pride". Bruce Sewell, Apple's General Counsel, quoted by the BBC News, states:

Other companies must compete with us by inventing their own technologies, not just by stealing ours.

The Apple lawsuit is widely seen as the next step in the escalating patent war between the telephone giants. In October Nokia sued Apple (the lawsuit available here, as PDF file), accusing it of infringing 10 Nokia patents for technologies such as wireless data, speech coding and security. Nokia states it has agreements with about 40 firms, which allows them to use the Nokia's technology, but despite the two-year negotiations between Apple and Nokia, the iPhone producer didn't sign the agreement.