14 DAY TRIAL // InterDigital is a patent licensing firm that is in the business of making money by finding and suing companies that infringe on patents. These activities have gained such companies the name of “patent trolls.”
InterDigital had sued Nokia and ZTE over a bunch of patents they have used in their products. Ever since the lawsuit was filed, Nokia got its smartphone business acquired by Microsoft, but the legal feud kept on going.
Anyway, this week, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit found Nokia and ZTE not guilty of infringing on any patent (of the five involved in the appeal), as reported by Reuters.
Four of the patents involved allowed the handsets to run using less power, while the last was related to allowing a device to transfer data over several networks.
Microsoft was quite happy with the decision, while ZTE said it was confident throughout this time that it was innocent of any patent infringement business.
As for InterDigital, they didn't seem all too concerned with the decision. In an interesting side-note, Huawei was also part of the litigation, but decided to find a solution and offered a settlement to InterDigital. Now, they probably wish they didn't.