Just as promised, Apple has responded to Nokia's patent infringement accusations with a lawsuit of its own. The Cupertino-based company claims Nokia is infringing on 13 of its patents, and furthermore accuses them of trying to gain an unjust competitive advantage, to make up for their declining share of the high-end phone market, by charging unwarranted fees for patents that allegedly cover industry compatibility standards.
The patents Apple alleges Nokia is infringing deal with, among other things, connecting a phone to a computer, teleconferencing, gesture-based features on a touch screen, power conservation techniques, and "pattern and color abstraction in a graphical user interface." For its part Nokia claims Apple infringes several of its patents related to wireless communications, speech coding, security and encryption.
It remains to be seen if either company's claims will hold any water in a trial, though a more likely outcome is probably that the two will reach a cross-licensing agreement of sorts out of court.
