The Battle Between Two Goliaths
Nokia, the number one cellphone manufacturers in the world and Apple, the celebrated maker i-phones are locked in bitter legal battle involving violation of intellectual property rights. In a court in the USA they have levelled allegations against each other of incorporating features in their respective products on which they claim to enjoy exclusive intellectual property rights . The battle started with Nokia, the Finnish company which enjoys worldwide reputation for its wide range of mobile phone models suing Apple on 10 counts of infringement of patent rights which has badly affected Nokia's sale of smartphones in the global market. And Apple responded to this legal challenge by slapping a legal suit which deals with infringement of patent rights of Apple on 13 counts.
As all we are by now familiar with certain features of Nokia's smartphone which do resemble in some ways that of i-phone manufactured by Apple. There are features like menus on a touch screen, connectivity to a computer, teleconferencing, power saving chips etc. which were originally made available by Apple in its smartphones. Now Apple has claimed that Nokia, the cellphone giant, incorporated these features for which it made substantial investments towards research and development , is unscrupulously making use of them without adequate compensation.
It is interesting to note that Nokia too made allegations on similar lines. It charged Apple with infringing some of its intellectual property rights which it claims to have acquired from third parties and Apple has been making unauthorized exploitation without any compensation. It ranges from Wireless data, Speech Coding and Security and Encryption etc. Nokia's patents relate to GSM, 3G and Wi-Fi and the compensation it wants 1 to 2 percent royalty on every i-phone sold which roughly works out to 6 to 12 dollar per phone. This battle between two Goliaths would be keenly followed and watched but it might take more than a few years to know the fate of these two suits.
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