On Friday, Nokia filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Apple Inc in regards to the iPhone and iPad products. This is the 5th complaint between Nokia and Apple over the course of the last year. Nokia claims that Apple has infringed on 10 different patents and is demanding royalties be paid on the more than 51 million iPhonas / iPads that have been sold to date.
There’s been a lot of focus on patents lately and it’s likely that this will only get worse as key players continue to battle for dominance in what will be the new computing frontier. Apple filed against HTC, HTC licensed a number of Microsoft patents, and HP buys Palm partly to gain control of Palm’s patents. Industry analysts are predicting that worldwide shipments of converged mobile devices (smartphones) will exceed 390 million by 2013. Because of that, all of the major players are working to position themselves in an attempt to control the lion share of the mobile market. Controlling the operating system used on those devices, or being the hardware manufacturer that produces the majority share of those 390 million devices will not only mean incredible revenues, but also a significant amount of power over the mobile industry – in much the same way Microsoft did with the PC many years ago.
So how does Nokia’s actions effect mobile users today? It doesn’t. This issue is before the court and will take years to resolve, and when it is resolved, most likely the court will order one company to pay the other company and maybe stop selling the devices. But that won’t effect those people that already have a device. So continue to enjoy your phone or buy that new one you’ve been looking at and don’t let all the patent fuss get in your way. 
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