Nokia cites 45 patents in lawsuits against HTC, RIM, Viewsonic

Nokia has unleashed a massive lawsuit campaign against HTC, RIM, and Viewsonic.

The mobile company said today that it has filed a complaint with the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) against HTC, and a host of lawsuits across the U.S. and Germany against RIM and Viewsonic, in addition to HTC. Nokia argues that the firms are violating a total of 45 patents.

"Nokia proprietary innovations protected by these patents are being used by the companies to enable hardware capabilities such as dual function antennas, power management and multimode radios, as well as to enhance software features including application stores, multitasking, navigation, conversational message display, dynamic menus, data encryption and retrieval of email attachments on a mobile device," Nokia wrote in a statement today.
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Although Nokia hasn't been the most litigious company in the mobile space, it has enforced its intellectual property in the past. Last year, in fact, the company inked a deal with Apple that saw the iPhone maker license a host of mobile patents from Nokia. The licensing deal came nearly two years after Nokia sued Apple for infringement.

Nokia didn't say which specific products HTC, RIM, and Viewsonic are offering that violate its patents. The company did point out, however, that it has licensed its patents to over 40 companies, seeming to indicate that it believes it has a strong defense.

"Many of these inventions are fundamental to Nokia products," Nokia's chief legal officer Louise Pentland said today in a statement. "We'd rather that other companies respect our intellectual property and compete using their own innovations, but as these actions show, we will not tolerate the unauthorized use of our inventions."

CNET has contacted HTC, RIM, and Viewsonic for comment. We will update this story when we have more information.

This story has been updated throughout the morning.