Another lawsuit: Nokia moves to spoil BREW, MediaFLO parties

If you were wondering whether Nokia Corp. would take advantage of last week’s potentially bruising decision by the U.S. International Trade Commission to ban new 3G handsets bearing Qualcomm Inc.’s chips, this news just in:
Nokia filed countersuits against Qualcomm in the Eastern District of Texas court, alleging that Qualcomm uses six Nokia patents in its MediaFLO and BREW technologies. Nokia seeks damages and injunctive relief in its counter-assertions to a suit originally filed in that court by Qualcomm on April 2.
“Nokia is confident that the Qualcomm patents are invalid . based on the alleged inventions having been patented or published by other companies, including Nokia, before Qualcomm,” Nokia said.
Qualcomm was working this morning on providing a reaction to the news.
Nokia claimed its patents are at “the core” of MediaFLO and BREW technologies. Specifically, the Finnish handset maker-which has a contentious cross-licensing agreement pending with Qualcomm and numerous complaints pending in various courts-claimed that its patents ensure broadcast quality of service within MediaFLO and that those patents enable downloading of applications with BREW.
Qualcomm has signed on Verizon Wireless and AT&T Mobility to its MediaFLO effort, and a number of carriers, including Verizon Wireless, use the company’s BREW-based application download service.