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Nokia-RIM patent royalty talks fall through

Finnish phonemaker is now requesting a U.S. court to enforce an arbitration award requiring RIM to halt sales and manufacturing of products equipped with WLAN capabilities.
Written by Kevin Kwang, Contributor

Nokia is requesting a court in California, United States, to enforce its arbitration award which would restrict Research In Motion (RIM) from manufacturing or selling any product that is equipped with wireless LAN (WLAN) capabilities until both of them can agree on patent royalty fees.

In a report by tech site ComputerWorld Tuesday, it was said that such a request is made only after two parties decide to settle a dispute through arbitration but one party does not follow through on the agreement. Both Nokia and RIM declined to comment on the court filing, which the IDG News Service said it obtained a copy of.

The arbitration took place over nine days in September in Sweden's Stockholm Chamber of Commerce--which acts as a neutral arbiter in commercial disputes.

Among the conclusions revealed in the court filing, 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". Most of RIM's phones implement the 802.11 WLAN standard, the report noted.

Nokia claimed in the petition RIM and its U.S. subsidiary RIM Corporation continues to "violate" the arbitration agreement by continuing to manufacture and sell its products despite not having reached an agreement, it added.

This is not the only patent dispute Nokia and RIM are embroiled in. The former had in May invoked 45 of its patents to initiate legal wars against RIM, HTC and Viewsonic in the United States and Germany.

These patents relate specifically to application stores, multitasking, navigation, conversational message display, dynamic menus, data encryption and retrieval of e-mail attachments on a mobile device, Nokia stated.   

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