The Court, in a decision handed down this morning, said that one of Qualcomm's patents was invalid for lack of novelty and obviousness, and that four of the claims in the other patent were invalid for lack of inventive step and insufficiency.
Mr Justice Floyd said that if the patents had been valid, then Nokia would have infringed the first patent (the '324) and claims 1,2 and 9 of the second patent (the '482). But he said that even if the '482 patent had been valid then he would not have held it to be essential to the relevant telecoms standard.
"We are pleased with the Court's decision that the patent claims are invalid and believe it is consistent with and supported by the facts," said Rick Simonson, Nokia's chief financial officer, in a statement. "This is the second court to conclude that Qualcomm does not have relevant and valid GSM patents."
IP practitioners have been waiting for a ruling in the closely watched case since the end of the 15-day hearing before the High Court in November and December last year. Had the Court found Qualcomm's patents to be valid, essential to industry standards and infringed by Nokia, then it would have had to deal with the question of how to calculate royalties payable on an essential patent.
"The case could have been the first time in which the courts found validity, infringement and dealt with the issue of remedies in the context of essentiality. That would have pushed the law forward after the UK High Court ruled on the question of essentiality in
Nokia v Interdigital
," said one lawyer who has been following the dispute closely. "As it was, it was something of a damp squib in terms of taking the law further."
But he said that the Qualcomm case demonstrated that the UK was becoming the "go-to place for cases relating to essentiality because they are willing to entertain these kinds of cases".
The dispute between Nokia and Qualcomm is the latest in a string of lawsuits between telecoms companies over patent validity, infringement and essentiality.
A series of trial dates in another dispute at the High Court between InterDigital and Nokia
have been set
for later this year and the first half of 2009. The International Trade Commission (ITC) in Washington DC, the US courts and the European Commission are all dealing with
disputes between telecoms companies
that raise similar issues.
Last week Qualcomm received a blow after the ITC announced that it would not review administrative law judge
Paul Luckern's initial determination
that Nokia's handsets do not infringe three Qualcomm patents related to 2G products. The US company said that it had not yet decided whether to appeal the ITC decision to the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.
