Mannheim court swats Nokia lawsuit against HTC

The Mannheim Regional Court has dismissed Nokia’s smartphone patent lawsuit against HTC on the same day as the hearing.

Nokia has filed 24 suits against HTC in Germany, one of which covers the German part of the European Patent entitled “A Communication Network Terminal for Accessing Internet”, which was heard this morning.

In an unusual move, Judge Dr Holger Kircher dismissed the case only hours later. An HTC statement said this showed that Nokia’s infringement case was “so poor that the court required no time to deliberate further after hearing Nokia’s oral arguments”.

The statement added: “Once again, HTC is delighted with the decision. This is embarrassing for a company [Nokia] which claims to have spent over €45 billion on R&D over the last 20 years. Nokia’s R&D spend is clearly not reflected in the quality of its patent portfolio and we  remain confident that Nokia’s portfolio poses little threat to HTC.”

Nokia did not respond to a request for comment.

Of the 24 cases Nokia has filed, two have been stayed until validity hearings (filed by HTC) are completed, while three have been dismissed. Nokia has secured one injunction against a number of HTC smartphones, which are powered by Android, but HTC said these have already been discontinued in Germany.

In the latest dispute, Nokia claimed that Google Play infringed the disputed patent because of “the way it allows third-party app developers to provide data to the end-user devices on which their programmes run via a Google-operated server,” according to Florian Müller on FossPatents.

Müller noted that one of Nokia’s recently- dismissed suits also targeted Google Play, making today’s victory a “significant achievement” for Google.

Germany has become an increasingly important battleground in the so-called smartphone wars in the past three years. Apple, Samsung, Nokia, Microsoft and Google-owned Motorola Mobility have all either filed or defended against patent claims in the country.