Apple has announced that it was countersuing Nokia. They are not a lot of details, but here’s a declaration Bruce Sewell, Apple’s General Counsel: “Other companies must compete with us by inventing their own technologies, not just by stealing ours”.
If you don’t remember, Nokia had fired the first (legal) salvo by filing a lawsuit over 10 alleged patent infringements that covered GSM, UMTS, WLAN and other key phone technologies. In that case, Nokia accused Apple of “getting a free ride on the back of Nokia’s innovation”.
It has been widely speculated that what Nokia really wants is an agreement with Apple over royalties (that Apple would pay to Nokia). We’ll let the courts decide who’s right or wrong, but in the end, it’s unlikely that either company stops making phones. It’s a matter of where the money is going.