Nokia filed patent claims against a number of companies in the US and Germany.  The Finnish phone maker claims that the companies,  HTC, RIM and Viewsonic, infringed a number of their patents.

“Nokia is a leader in many technologies needed for great mobile products,” said Louise Pentland, chief legal officer at Nokia. “We have already licensed our standards essential patents to more than 40 companies.  Though we’d prefer to avoid litigation, Nokia had to file these actions to end the unauthorized use of our proprietary innovations and technologies, which have not been widely licensed.”

According to Reuters, Nokia filed complaints in the US International Trade Commission (ITC) against HTC, filed lawsuits in the Federal District Court of Delaware against HTC and Viewsonic,  filed a case against HTC and RIM in the Regional Court in Dusseldorf, Germany and in the Regional Courts in Mannheim and Munich, Germany against all three companies.  A total of 45 patents were named in one or more of Nokia’s complaints.

Nokia claims that the technology these companies use to enable hardware capabilities such as dual function antennas, power management and multimode radios, as well as to enhance software features including application stores, multitasking, navigation, conversational message display, dynamic menus, data encryption and retrieval of email attachments on a mobile device are all patented innovations of Nokia.

“Many of these inventions are fundamental to Nokia products,” Pentland concluded. “We’d rather that other companies respect our intellectual property and compete using their own innovations, but as these actions show, we will not tolerate the unauthorized use of our inventions.”

It is unclear whether Nokia wants to ban these products or settle for a licensing deal with royalties.

In other Nokia news, aside from announcing that the Nokia 808 PureView will be available to consumers this May, they also announced the continuous partnership with Carl Zeiss with an exclusive deal to make high-end cameraphones. Nokia also announced that they would be launching a new-top-of-the-range-model this month.

The quality of cameras that accompany smartphones plays a crucial role in enticing consumers to buy a certain product.  The better the quality of photos and videos taken with the cameraphone makes it a must-buy item.

“Manufacturers will continue to improve the cameras with higher resolutions, better focus, and several other features to differentiate their devices on a crowded market where touch screen smartphones look alike,” IDC analyst Francisco Jeronimo said, noting that the deal is good for Nokia.