Nokia's three major legal fights

The world's top mobile phone maker Nokia launched a new patent broadside against Apple on Tuesday, escalating a battle for control of the smartphone market that has already led to a flurry of lawsuits.

Since Motorola Inc launched a patent attack on Nokia in 1989, the Finnish firm has built one of the mobile industry's widest patent portfolios. Only Ericsson and Qualcomm Inc have comparable portfolios.

The following are key facts about three major legal battles in Nokia's history:

MOTOROLA VS NOKIA

In the 1980s Nokia rose to became one of the world's top cellphone manufacturers, surprising established players.

Industry reaction: one April morning in 1989 a large box with more than 16 kilograms of documents, charging the firm with infringing nine Motorola patents, landed in the lobby of Nokia's Salo plant in southern Finland.

"In April 1989 Motorola declared a war on Nokia, and I had to receive the declaration," Anne-Liisa Palmu-Joronen, a lawyer at Nokia's phone unit at the time, wrote in her memoirs.

Motorola took Nokia to the International Trade Commission and a court in Chicago and Nokia agreed in November to pay more than $10 million to settle the case.

Palmu-Joronen says Nokia learned from the 1989 Motorola case the role of immaterial rights in the battle for market share.

"The immaterial and invisible part of the battle on the global market would in the future be a significant part of the competiveness for the company like Nokia," she writes.

QUALCOMM VS NOKIA

In mid-2008 Nokia and Qualcomm settled a 3-year, three-continent legal battle over patent licenses and royalties for 15 years. The battle alone cost the companies tens of millions of dollars in legal fees and worried investors on both sides of the Atlantic.

In April 1992, the two firms had signed a licensing agreement, giving Nokia access to Qualcomm's CDMA patents. Over 15 years, Nokia says it paid $1 billion for Qualcomm's "early patents," giving it a fully-paid, royalty-free license to those.

But when the smoke cleared, Nokia still agreed to a hefty one-time payment of 1.7 billion euros, a deal that also opened the door for Nokia to use Qualcomm chips in its phones.

NOKIA VS APPLE

A legal battle between Apple and Nokia over patent infringement is likely to last for more than a year, said Bill Merritt, the head of mobile licensing firm InterDigital.

Nokia filed a suit in the United States in October, saying Apple had infringed 10 patents in technologies including wireless data transfer, a key factor in the success of iPhone. The suit accused Apple of trying to hitch a "free ride" on Nokia's technology investment.

Apple, which entered the industry in mid-2007, overtook Nokia last quarter as the cellphone maker generating the highest total operating profit.

Apple filed a countersuit on December 11 claiming that Nokia is infringing 13 Apple patents.

"Other companies must compete with us by inventing their own technologies, not just by stealing ours," Bruce Sewell, Apple's General Counsel, said in a statement.

On Tuesday, Nokia said it had filed a complaint with the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) alleging that Apple infringes Nokia patents in "virtually all of its mobile phones, portable music players, and computers" sold.

The inclusion of the U.S. firm's iconic iPod and iMac products in the complaint marked an escalation from the previous patent claims.