BlackBerry hits Nokia with patent infringement suit

Firm turns to patents to make money from smartphone efforts

BlackBerry is suing Nokia, accusing it of infringing 11 of its patents in a lengthy 96-page complaint.

While BlackBerry has been struggling for years to make money from its smartphone efforts, and so now appears to be looking to used its patent portfolio as a means to improve its situation. This week it launched

The patents in question relate to LTE- and UMTS/UTRAN-compliant products and services and BlackBerry is setting its sights on Nokia's Flexi line of base stations and its Liquid Radio software.

"In the course of developing its ground-breaking mobile communications devices, BlackBerry and its family of companies invented new technologies that cover key features of LTE and Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS)/UTRAN communications," BlackBerry lawyers wrote in the complaint.

"To take one example, enabling seamless voice services for LTE users posed a critical challenge that BlackBerry was able to address."

These patents originally belonged to Nortel, and Nokia had attempted to purchase them directly from but failed. They were later bought and divided amongst a consortium of companies that included Apple, Microsoft and, of course, BlackBerry.

The complaint also alleges that Nokia encouraged mobile networks like AT&T or T-Mobile to use infringing products in question for their own LTE services without a license from BlackBerry.

BlackBerry isn't looking block the sale of any of Nokia's products and instead has said it wants to reach a licensing deal on fair and reasonable terms. In other words, it's probably skint.

Nokia has yet to respond to the lawsuit, but it needn't feel too singled out. BlackBerry last year launched a patent assault on Android smartphone maker Blu, accusing the firm of infringing 15 patents that in turn earned the company "substantial revenues."

The case is the latest to hit the market, following on from a major $1bn lawsuit that Apple has filed against Qualcomm.