Nokia has asked a federal judge to toss the ongoing patent dispute case between the phone giant and Apple, claiming that Apple’s claims are “designed to divert attention away from free-riding off of Nokia’s intellectual property.”

In October, Nokia filed suit against Apple, accusing the company of infringing on 10 patents and asking for backpay on royalties for the patents. Apple has sold 42 million iPhones since 2007.

Apple then counter-sued, accusing Nokia of patent infringement, as well, asking for an injunction on some Nokia smartphones.

Nokia’s latest filing accuses Apple of “revisionist history, misleading characterizations, unsupported allegations and flawed and contradictory legal theories to turn these fruitless negotiations into a multi-count federal lawsuit.” Both companies tried to work out a deal, but got nowhere.

The ongoing patent battle between Apple and Nokia escalated Friday, when Apple moved to block imports of Nokia cell phones to the U.S.
Apple made its request in a complaint filed with the International Trade Commission, an independent federal agency that examines issues including unfair trade practices involving patent, trademark, and copyright infringement.

Will Nokia devices be blocked from the U.S.?

In December, Nokia filed its own complaint with the USITC in Washington. In it, the Finnish company alleged that Apple infringes seven Nokia patents “in virtually all of its mobile phones, portable music players, and computers” and sought to ban imports of Apple’s iPhone, iPod, and MacBook products.
Responding to Apple’s latest move, Nokia spokesman Mark Durrant told Bloomberg that “Nokia will study the complaint when it is received and continue to defend itself vigorously. However this does not alter the fact that Apple has failed to agree appropriate terms for using Nokia technology and has been seeking a free ride on Nokia’s innovation since it shipped the first iPhone in 2007.”

Back in October, before the patent debate between the two companies moved to the trade commission, Nokia filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Delaware regarding 10 patents related to wireless handsets, which Nokia says Apple has refused to license. Every iPhone model since the original, introduced in 2007, infringes on those patents, Nokia has charged.
The 10 patents it accuses Apple of violating are related to making phones able to run on GSM, 3G, and Wi-Fi networks. They include patents on wireless data, speech coding, security, and encryption, according to Nokia.
Apple then filed a countersuit accusing Nokia of copying technology inside the iPhone. Apple said Nokia is violating a range of patents, from real-time signal processing methods to list scrolling and document translation, scaling, and rotation on a touch-screen display.
In November, research firm Strategy Analytics reported that Apple had surpassed Nokia in quarterly mobile phone profits, bringing in $1.6 billion from the iPhone, compared with Nokia’s $1.1 billion in cell phone profits.
Nokia’s new mobile chief, Rick Simonson, acknowledged in an interview earlier this month that 2009 had been a difficult year for the company.
“Yes, we have lost ground in the smartphone space over the past 18 months, but the decline has stopped and stablized in the second and third quarters of 2009,” Simonson told the India Times.
“The new year will see [our] recovery in smartphones with the introduction of Maemo and the stabilization of the Symbian operating system, which by the way, continues to be the platform for the largest number of smartphones, globally,” Simonson added.

Nokia has finally decided to kill off its N-Gage gaming platform after years of shifting the strategy behind it with little success.

Nokia introduced N-Gage in 2003 as a standalone handheld gaming device, which developed a small but enthusiastic following. Nokia later discontinued the device and instead came up with a plan to develop phones that would support the N-Gage platform. After a delay, it began introducing phones that could play N-Gage games in early 2008.

On Friday, Nokia posted a note at its N-Gage Web site informing users that the company would no longer publish new games for the platform, and that the N-Gage.com Web site and community aspects of the platform will be shut down at the end of 2010. Nokia will keep selling the existing games through September 2010.

Instead of N-Gage, Nokia wants customers who are interested in gaming to turn to its Ovi application store.

“As mobile gaming evolves and begins to encompass social gaming, we want to offer one store front with an even broader portfolio of games — games for everyone. It’s much more convenient to have one place to get all your mobile games, and this is what Ovi Store provides,” it said.

Nokia hopes to add more community elements to the Ovi Store that might replace N-Gage Arena, a site where gamers could chat in a forum and post their high scores. “We are actively working on offering more community elements through Ovi,” Nokia said.

Some N-Gage fans wrote of their dismay after hearing that the forum will be shut down. “A sad day indeed,” a user going by the name nce007 wrote on the forum. That user and others seemed unimpressed with Ovi. “Ovi cannot replace N-Gage in my opinion,” nce007 wrote.

“I just cannot believe that such a wonderful platform which had great potential is being phased away in such a manner to Ovi?” wrote another user who goes by apurvguptal.

Nokia has also been toying with the strategy behind Ovi since it launched last year. Ovi.com is a central site where people can find various services hosted by Nokia, including photo-sharing, e-mail, calendar and navigation services. Ovi.com now includes Nokia’s new application store. But earlier this year, Nokia shut down a Seattle office that was developing an online sharing service, halted investment in the Ovi Share photo-sharing service and shut down Mosh, a social-networking site.

Nokia and Apple are going to square off in court

Nokia today issued a press release stating it will take Apple to court for patent infringements related to its GSM, UMTS, and Wi-Fi standards.

In total, Apple is allegedly infringing on 10 patents covered by the Finnish company — the lawsuit was filed in the Federal District Court of Delaware.

“The basic principle in the mobile industry is that those companies who contribute in technology development to establish standards create intellectual property, which others then need to compensate for,” Nokia Legal VP Ilkka Rahnasto said in a statement. “Apple is also expected to follow this principle. By refusing to agree appropriate terms for Nokia’s intellectual property, Apple is attempting to get a free ride on the back of Nokia’s innovation.”

Nokia reportedly invested near $60 billion into research and development, as the company owns a large patent portfolio. The company, the largest mobile phone maker, signed previous licensing agreements with 40 various companies — allowing them to use the technology it accuses Apple of infringing — but Apple is trying to avoid paying.

For example, Nokia has a couple thousands UMTS-related patents alone, with even more in existence.

The Apple iPhone, with 7.4 million iPhones sold in Apple’s most recent, most profitable quarter ever continues to chip away Nokia’s smartphone market share. Nokia dropped from 41% smartphone market share down to 35% in a single quarter.

Nokia didn’t state exact examples of infringement, so it’s unsure how legitimate these accusations are.

Nokia, the world’s biggest maker of cellphones, presented new models Wednesday that have more music features and mesh better with Facebook and the company’s coming netbook computer.

The announcements are part of Nokia’s attempt to branch out into new markets, like wireless online services.

“We are not on the defensive, we are on the offensive,” a Nokia executive vice president, Anssi Vanjoki, said at the two-day Nokia World event here.

The company announced a deal with Facebook, the leading social networking site, that would let users of some its phones update their location and status directly to the site through a Nokia Ovi account.

The feature will be introduced on a new cellphone, the N97 mini, that was presented Wednesday and will retail for €450, or $644, without a contract when it starts shipping in October.

“People want to bring their physical and online worlds together via the Internet,” said Jonas Guest, vice president of the Nokia Nseries phone division. “The Nokia N97 mini is designed for this new social Internet and to help navigate people and places.”

Nokia has been the top phone maker since 1998 but has gradually expanded to include online services like downloads of music, games, maps and the fast transfer of photos and video, especially as cellphone markets have become saturated.

It has estimated that the global online market will reach €100 billion by 2010.

Nokia also offered more details about its new laptop, dubbed the Nokia Booklet 3G, which is scheduled to ship in the fourth quarter of 2009 with the new Windows 7 operating system.

Nokia said the Booklet would be sold for €575. In contrast, many new netbooks by Asus, Lenovo and Dell are often priced around €350 or less.

But Nokia expects the Booklet 3G to be distributed by cellphone service providers, who usually offer a lower price if bought with an annual service contract.

The Booklet will have an aluminum shell; a 25-centimeter, or 10-inch, screen; an Intel Atom processor; one gigabyte of memory; and a third-generation SIM card to enable it to access cellular networks. It will weigh 1.3 kilograms, or 2.8 pounds, something which will become a piece of attraction on your lap desk.

Unlike most netbooks, the Booklet will have a built-in GPS navigation chip that will be coupled to Nokia’s Ovi Maps software.