Tired of reading about the BSkyB and Virgin Media skirmishes? Another battle is being played out in Europe over mobile wireless intellectual property.

Nokia went to German and Dutch courts yesterday seeking to invalidate some Qualcomm patents. Qualcomm in response launched a counterattack against Nokia today and tomorrow the firm will be at a public hearing on separate litigation the company has with Broadcom.

Whoa. And we thought the Media companies were bad.

Nokia is arguing that in Europe some of Qualcomm’s patents are “exhausted” and unenforceable in European markets.

Nokia has long paid Qualcomm licensing fees but a long-running deal expires in April and the two companies have been able to come to agreement (sound familiar?) over what kind of deal will replace it. The current deal is a cross-licensing one, involving some Nokia intellectual property as well as Qualcomm IP.

According to OUT-LAW: “Qualcomm filed a patent infringement suit against Nokia in autumn 2005 alleging that the company violated 11 of its patents. That suit came just a week after Nokia and five other mobile network and chip companies complained to the European Commission about Qualcomm’s licensing practices.”

That complaint, which is still being investigated by the Commission, was about allegations that Qualcomm was not behaving fairly in its licensing of patents related to 3G technology. The mobile networks said that Qualcomm was not living up to promises made to international standards bodies that it would license its IP fairly if it were adopted as an industry standard.

“Qualcomm will continue to aggressively prosecute its current infringement cases against Nokia to stop Nokia from infringing Qualcomm’s intellectual property rights related to GSM/GPRS and EDGE,” Qualcomm stated in a release today.