The dispute centres on patents owned by Qualcomm which it sought
to protect in a court case begun last November. That case asked for
a block to be put on Finland's Nokia's sale of mobile phones which
Qualcomm claimed used technology that infringed its patents.
Nokia has tried to resolve the situation by the use of an
arbitrator and had asked for the law suit to be delayed pending the
outcome of arbitration.
A Californian federal court denied Nokia the right to a stay of
the case in March this year. The US Courts of Appeal for the
Federal Circuit has just ruled, though, that that decision must be
re-considered.
The Appeals Court has ruled that the lower court "did not
perform the correct inquiry" and must re-consider whether or not to
allow Nokia to delay the court action until arbitration has run its
course.
The case involves 11 Qualcomm patents and one belonging to its
subsidiary SnapTrack. The case was filed just a week after Nokia
joined with other companies to complain to the European Commission
about Qualcomm's use of patents for third generation mobile phone
technology.
Nokia, Panasonic, Broadcom, NEC, Texas Instruments and Ericsson
claimed to the Commission that Qualcomm violated Europe's
anti-trust regulations
An administrative judge ruled earlier this month that Qualcomm
infringed some patents belonging to Broadcom. That judge did find,
though, that not all of Broadcom's infringement claims were
justified.
