Nokia issues another patent suit against Apple

Nokia has fired another shot in its long-running patent battle with Apple. The Finnish company has filed a complaint with the US International Trade Commission charging that Apple infringes its patents "in virtually all of its mobile phones, portable music players and computers."

The complaint involves seven patents that Nokia says Apple is using to "create key features" in products related to the user interface and camera, antenna and power management technologies. Nokia wants the ITC to investigate its claims.

Nokia and Apple are already locked in a legal struggle that started in October when Nokia filed suit against Apple in the US District Court for the District of Delaware. Nokia, the world's largest mobile handset maker, alleged in that lawsuit that Apple infringed 10 of its patents related to wireless technologies used in the iPhone. Apple countersued earlier this month, charging that Nokia has infringed on 13 Apple patents.

"This action is about protecting the results of ... pioneering development" of "key technologies in small electronic devices," said Nokia's Paul Mellin, the general manager of patent licensing in a statement about the ITC complaint. "While our litigation in Delaware is about Apple's attempt to free-ride on the back of Nokia investment in wireless standards, the ITC case filed today is about Apple's practice of building its business on Nokia's propriety innovation."

An Apple spokesman could not be reached for comment, but when it filed the countersuit Apple general counsel Bruce Sewell said: "Other companies must compete with us by inventing their own technologies, not just by stealing ours."