A while back we saw a legal battle between Apple and Nokia when Nokia accused Apple of infringing on 10 of it's patents. Their claim wasn't raised until two years after the iPhone was initially launched and was timed just after Apple had overtaken them in the smart phone market (but Nokia still sells more handsets) - which means Nokia were likely filing that suit to try and get some money back from a market they were losing out on.
The ten patents in suit relate to technologies fundamental to making devices which are compatible with one or more of the GSM, UMTS (3G WCDMA) and wireless LAN standards. The patents cover wireless data, speech coding, security and encryption and are infringed by all Apple iPhone models shipped since the iPhone was introduced in 2007.
The argument from Nokia was that all mobile technology companies contribute standards for others to use, but do so expecting royalties for the use of that technology which they say Apple refused to. A couple of months after that initial suit Apple then responded with a counter-suit saying Nokia had infringed on 13 of their patents. It seems to be a bit of a childish and "one-up" sort of response to which I thought Apple were better than, but looking more closely it seems that in trying to catch-up with Apple that Nokia then copied the UI from the iPhone which does actually infringe patents. So if Nokia were to win their law suit it would only be right that Apple should also win theirs which would pretty much negate either one's win. So in copying Apple they did pretty much shoot themselves in the foot, if they wanted to win royalties for Apple infringing on their patents they should have been more careful with about copying technology.
In response to this Nokia then filed a complaint with the ITC to request that imports of the iPhone, iPod, and MacBooks be banned due to unfair trade practices. At this point they did re-iterate their initial complaint to say all the products they requested to be banned infringed on 7 patents.
Now Apple have retaliated with a request of their own to the ITC that Nokia handsets should be banned though details of this claim are not yet available. Should both companies succeed in the ITC banning the handsets (which is very unlikely I think) it could dramatically shift the smart phone market in the US.
