Legal battles are an ongoing undercurrent in the ever-changing world of tech, and rarely a gizmo manages to reach the retail consumer market without a rivaling company launching patent disputes.
We’ve seen plenty of it and even today; Apple wants to block Samsung’s Galaxy S III from selling on multiple infringement grounds, while Samsung wants to join forces with Google and possibly HTC in order to reach a cross-licensing agreement.
To add to those significant stories, Nokia – a company which has put the majority of its depleted eggs in the Windows Phone 8 basket – has gotten itself worked up about Google’s Nexus 7 tablet, which, as well as being extremely cheap and impressively powerful, is a Wi-Fi-only affair.
Of course, the Finnish company’s head honchos aren’t just moderately upset by the fact they won’t be able to browse the Web on-the-fly with their Nexus 7 tablets, but are also pretty peeved about the Wi-Fi technology itself, claiming the much-lauded device violates a number of its own patents with regards to the Wi-Fi.
Speaking with The Inquirer, Nokia stated neither Google nor ASUS – the manufacturer of the Nexus 7 – is "licensed under our patent portfolio" with regards to "standards essential" implementations, before adding:
Companies who are not yet licensed under our standard essential patents should simply approach us and sign up for a license.
This notion is further corroborated by the fact that no legal proceedings have been made, although with neither Google or ASUS in the mood to pass comment, we’ll still be keeping an eye out for any developments on this story in the coming weeks.
With Google already up to its eyeballs in a hatful of legal disputes, it’s unlikely to encourage Nokia to take the legal route, but with many disputes often resulting in a court date, we won’t discount any course of action at such an early stage.
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