Nokia attempting to block Blackberry phones in the US

While Google and Apple battle it out for the number one spot for the largest smartphone platform market share, we’re sure that their competition such as Windows Phone and Blackberry (and the upcoming Blackberry 10) wouldn’t mind a larger slice of the pie, although in this case we guess at this point in time both Windows Phone and Blackberry will have to go head to head if they wish to gain a significant share in the market and secure their position at third at least for the time being.

That being said, it certainly looks that way as it has been reported that Nokia is petitioning a Californian court to enforce the terms of an arbitration award won by the Finnish company in Sweden in which RIM “is not entitled to manufacture or sell products compatible with the WLAN standard without first agreeing with Nokia on the royalty to be paid for its manufacture and/or sale of subscriber terminals compatible with such standards.” To put it simply – Nokia is looking to block the sales of present and future Blackberry phones in the US, and since pretty much all our smartphones these days come with WiFi capabilities, this translates to almost every single Blackberry phone out there, past, present and future.

For those who might not be familiar with the situation, it seems that back in 2003, RIM and Nokia made a deal in which RIM would license Nokia’s patents related to wireless devices, although in what appeared to be a rather sneaky move, Nokia and Sony created a company to help manage said patents, which was then followed by that company suing RIM for patent infringement. RIM argued that those patents were covered in their agreement with Nokia, but ultimately the Swedish court ruled in Nokia’s favor.

With Nokia having recently released their Windows Phone 8 handsets and with RIM pegged to release Blackberry 10 in 2013, both companies appear to have put all their eggs into one basket and we’re not surprised that they’re fighting tooth and nail to survive.

Tyler Lee
Categories: Cellphones
Tags: BlackBerry, Legal, Nokia, RIM