Blackberry has filed a patent-infringement suit against Nokia, demanding royalties on the Finnish company’s mobile network products. Nokia’s Flexi Multiradio base stations, radio network controllers and Liquid Radio software are using technology covered by as many as 11 patents held by BlackBerry, according to the suit filed in US federal court in Delaware and reported by Bloomberg. The patents are considered essential to 3GPP standards and BlackBerry is offering a licence on FRAND terms.
"Nokia has persisted in encouraging the use" of the standard-compliant products without a licence from BlackBerry, the suit said, and BlackBerry is seeking compensation. The company didn’t specify how much it’s seeking.
Nokia is aware of the inventions because the company has cited some of the patents in some of its own patent applications, BlackBerry said. Some of the patents in the case were previously owned by Nortel Networks, and Nokia had at one point tried to buy them as part of a failed bid for Nortel’s business in 2009, according to BlackBerry. BlackBerry is part of the Rockstar Consortium that bought Nortel’s patents out of bankruptcy in 2011.
