DailyTech - Apple, Nokia Tag Team Samsung in Patent Infringement Case

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Gadgets Apple, Nokia Tag Team Samsung in Patent Infringement Case
Tiffany Kaiser - March 7, 2013 3:24 PM

36 comment(s) - last by testerguy.. on Mar 9 at 8:13 AM

Samsung is expected to file its own brief in the following weeks

Nokia has decided to join Apple in the quest to crush Samsung.

Nokia filed a brief with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington earlier this week in an effort to help Apple achieve a permanent injunction of some Samsung phones.

According to Nokia, U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh was wrong in making Apple show "causal nexus" between demand for the iPhone and the patent violations.

Keith Broyles, Nokia's attorney from Alston & Bird, said that Nokia joined the case as an ally for Apple in order to protect patents for future innovative devices.

"Nokia has recently been involved in numerous U.S. patent lawsuits, as both a plaintiff and defendant," Broyles wrote. "Nokia is thus both a significant patent owner that might seek an injunction to protect its patent rights, and a manufacturer in an industry in which patent owners routinely issue threats of injunctions for patent infringement."

This case has been ongoing for some time. Last June, Apple's patent infringement claims against Samsung for its Galaxy Nexus phone led to a preliminary injunction, ruled by Judge Koh. Samsung then appealed this ruling on July 1 in an attempt to lift the temporary ban. The ban stayed.

In August, a jury in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California ruled that Samsung indeed infringed Apple's patents.

However, in December, Judge Koh denied Apple's request for a permanent injunction against certain Samsung phones, which sent the case back to appeals court. Now, apparently Nokia wants in on the action.

Samsung is expected to file its own brief in the following weeks.

Source: Thomson Reuters News & Insight