Nokia sues Apple for patent infringement

The world's top cell phone maker Nokia Oyj yesterday charged Apple with infringing Nokia patents in its iPhone.

Nokia dominates the global handset market but it has lost some ground to new smartphone entrants like Apple which entered the market with its iPhone in mid-2007.

The 10 patents in the lawsuit, filed in the US state of Delaware, relate to technologies fundamental for devices using GSM, UMTS and/or local area network (LAN) standards, Nokia said.

"Nokia's enormous patent portfolio doesn't make this a big surprise but it could have severe repercussions for Apple and its component supplier," said CCS Insight analyst Geoff Blaber. "Once again intellectual property has become the secondary battleground in a highly competitive mobile phone market."

Last year, Nokia ended a more than three-year legal battle with US chipmaker Qualcomm which spanned three continents and involved more than a dozen separate cases.