Apple sues Nokia’s alleged Patent Assertion Entities, Acacia and CIPM

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Apple has filed an antitrust lawsuit against the patent assertion entities (PAEs) Acacia Research Corporation (ARC) and Conversant Intellectual Property Management (CIPM) by alleging them to have conspired with Nokia to diffuse and abuse Apple and other companies.

The complaint Apple has registered against Acacia and CIPM suggest that he companies have sued Apple more than 40 and twice a dozen times respectively. The complaint also mentions that at least a dozen of these patent infringement claims are based on Nokia patents.

More importantly, this lawsuit from Apple comes right after when the fruit company was ordered to pay $7.3 million for infringing on two patents which once belonged to Nokia.

Interestingly Apple describes that the reason behind these litigation is Nokia’s failure to compete in the mobile phone industry that’s insisting the Finnish firm to seek revenue from patent infringement claims.

“Unable to compete with innovative companies such as Apple – which had developed a revolutionary hardware and software platform – Nokia quickly transformed itself,” the complaint says. “It changed from a company focused on supplying cell phones and other consumer products to a company bent on exploiting the patents that remain from its years as a successful cell phone supplier.”

In another statement Apple tries to assert that Nokia has prepared a list of companies to sue it because they are not producing anything now which will also allow the Finnish firm to prevent from counterclaims as not being involved directly.

Update: Nokia has also responded with their own lawsuits in which the firm sues Apple in Germany alleging the violation of 32 patents of the company combined with the patents of recently acquired Alcatel-Lucent.