The US Federal Trade Commission has resolved another of the multiple Nokia-Qualcomm lawsuits in Nokia's favour.
"Qualcomm's strategy of pursuing lawsuits around the world against Nokia continues to be rejected," said Nokia.
The Nokia-Qualcomm lawsuits started in 2005 with Qualcomm suing for infringement of GSM patents.
That happened some three months after the July 2005 change of CEO at Qualcomm, when Qualcomm co-founder Irwin Jacobs handed over the CEO role to his son Paul Jacobs.
2006 saw four similar suits about GSM patents brought by Qualcomm, and one brought by Nokia alleging a breach of the 'fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory' terms for licensing CDMA patents for 3G technology, which had been previously agreed to by Qualcomm.
Last year the two companies stepped up the pace, initiating no fewer than eight lawsuits plus an arbitration request.
Nokia-Qualcomm lawsuits have now been initiated in California, Wisconsin, Texas, the UK, Germany, the Netherlands, France, Italy and China.
Qualcomm's chief counsel, Don Rosenberg, said the company is 'disappointed' by the FTC decision. He pointed out that the consolidation of all these cases, planned for a legal hearing on July 2008, may resolve them 'quickly and efficiently'.
The downside for Qualcomm of all these legal actions is, not only that they are costing $200m a year in lawyers' fees, but that Qualcomm is finding it hard to find any company to take its 4G proposed standard UMB (Ultra Mobile Broadband).
"You only get one chance at it", said Malcolm Penn, CEO of analysts Future Horizons, "the more unreasonable you are, the more you people dig in to stop you doing it again. It's much smarter if you don't quite screw people into the ground and, instead, try and get as much as you can without upsetting people. But if you absolutely go for broke, and try and take as much as you can, you never get another chance."