Close on the heels of resolution of the Nokia-Qualcomm patent disputes, the patent peril engulfing the wireless industry reared its head in a New York appeals court yesterday, with Nokia losing a hearing against the Pennsylvania company InterDigital, which is asserting that Nokia infringed some of its 3G patents.

The New York court allowed InterDigital to pursue its case against Nokia before the US International Trade Commission (ITC). Nokia had argued that the dispute should be resolved by an arbitrator.

InterDigital have asked the ITC to issue injunctions against Nokia and Samsung to try and get their phones barred from the US market. The ITC is expected to rule on the Samsung issue in November with a final decision expected by March 2009.

After a 2006 settlement between InterDigital and Nokia, Nokia paid InterDigital $243m, and after a 2007 settlement, Samsung was ordered to pay InterDigital $134m. Earlier in July 2008, Nokia and InterDigital settled two patent infringement actions in the UK.

The wireless industry has been bedeviled by expensive legal actions. Nokia and Qualcomm were spending $200m each on lawyers before they settled their disputes earlier this month.

"There's been controversy around the strategy of doing R&D to create IP and market that IP, rather than actually making something", says Stephen Entwistle, Vice President, Strategic Technologies Practice, at telecoms analysts Strategy Analytics, "but that's an old-fashioned view. Someone has to do the R&D."

However, Entwistle points out that some companies ask for onerous terms on pain of litigation.

"Qualcomm's approach is that if you want anything from us you have to pay 5 per cent whether you want one IP or all of our IP. That's expensive if, like Nokia, you're not using any of Qualcomm's know-how, just some IP that has been sunk into the bowels of chips a long time ago."

Broadcom's CEO Scott McGregor, points out: "There must be a million patents behind a cellphone. What happens if anyone who owns one of these thinks he can shake down the industry by charging 3 per cent royalty on a handset?"

McGregor points out that the percentage is paid on the price of a handset whether it's made out of plastic or platinum without any bearing on the value of the technology.

The hugely expensive legal actions in the wireless industry over 3G technologies prompted Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, NEC, NextWave Wireless, Nokia, Nokia Siemens Networks and Sony Ericsson to get together recently to agree to share patents on 4G technology LTE on a reasonable basis.

Neither Qualcomm nor InterDigital have joined that group.

See also: Mannerisms, the blog of David Manners. Updated twice daily, it's the distinctive, entertaining, authoritative and never dull commentary on the semiconductor industry, from someone who knows. Sign up for the Mannerisms eNewsletter.