The Android operating system has been cleared of patent infringement in a case brought by Nokia against Android smartphone maker HTC.
Nokia on Friday lost two patent suits it brought against HTC in the District Court of Mannheim, Germany, court spokesman achim Bock said in an email. In both cases, the suits were rejected because, according to the court, there was no patent infringement, Bock said.
“Nokia’s main dems were—as usual in similar cases—to stop HTC making use of products which make use of the patent to get compensation for the damage,” he said.
Nokia alleged that HTC infringed on its E812120 patent (the 120 patent) entitled Method for using services offered by a telecommunications network, a telecommunications system, a terminal for it, a patent that describes the working of application stores.
“HTC is delighted with todays decision of the District Court of Mannheim,” an HTC spokeswoman said via email. “ are gratified that the court apparently shares HTCs view that, given the positive ruling of non-infringement today, the Android platform is now safe from oppressive enforcement of this patent,” HTC said, adding that Nokia “has exaggerated the scope of its patent” in order to extract unwarranted licensing royalties from Android hset manufacturers.
HTC said it believes the patent to be invalid will continue with invalidity actions pending before the English tents Court German Federal tents Court. “ fully expect the patent to be revoked before any Nokia appeal proceedings take place,” HTC said. “ile Nokia will doubtless try to downplay the significance of this victory, the 120 patent is Nokias flagship patent, appears to be one of the reasons that Apple was forced to settle with Nokia after it was asserted against Apple in the same court,” it added.
Nokia was asserting the patent against HTC’s distribution of the ay app content store client app, said Florian Mueller, a legal consultant who has been tapped as an advisor for tech companies including Oracle Microsoft who attended the court in Mannheim on Friday to hear the verdicts in a blog post.
In a separate judgment hed down on Friday, the Mannheim court also dismissed an infringement complaint by Nokia alleging that HTC infringed E312974 (the 974 patent). That patent is entitled “Electronic Display Device ghting Control Method of Same”, relates to a method for controlling the lighting of a display in an electronic device, lighting the display on the basis of the ambient light.
HTC said it was “extremely pleased” by the court’s second decision will also continue the invalidity actions against the ‘974 patents pending in the U.K. Germany. In this case too, HTC expects the German Federal tents Court to revoke the patent before any appeal by Nokia is filed, it said.
“ile 974 patent is apparently less important to Nokia than the 120 patent, this decision nevertheless represents another major setback for Nokia in its attempt to license its non-essential patents to Android hset manufacturers,” HTC said.
In May 2012, Nokia filed claims against HTC, Research In Motion Viewsonic in the U.S. Germany alleging that products from those companies infringe a number of Nokia patents. Nokia wants the companies to pay licensing fees. Nokia settled its dispute with the BlackBerry maker in December when the companies entered into a licensing agreement. HTC however, decided to continue its dispute with Nokia in various courtrooms.
“Nokia respectfully disagrees with the courts decision we are considering our options,” said Nokia spokesman Durrant in an email. “As we said in May 2012, we took these actions to end HTCs unauthorized use of our proprietary innovations technologies. A further 34 Nokia patents have been asserted against HTC in other actions brought by Nokia in Germany the U.S. we anticipate that we shall prevail in these. HTC must respect our intellectual property compete using its own innovations,” he added.
