Finnish handset maker Nokia on Wednesday sued Blackberry maker RIM, HTC Corp, and Viewsonic Corp in the U.S. and Germany, alleging that their products infringe a number of its patents.

"We have taken this step to stop the unauthorised use of our proprietary innovations and technologies which are not extensively licensed to the industry and make up the majority of our industry leading patent portfolio," a Nokia spokesperson said in a statement.

Nokia alleged 45 innovation infringements, including 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, by these companies.

"Nokia is a leader in many technologies needed for great mobile products," Louise Pentland, chief legal officer at Nokia, said in a statement. "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."

"Many of these inventions are fundamental to Nokia products," Pentland continued. "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."

In a statement, HTC said it "has been a licensee of Nokia on wireless essential patents since 2003. We are waiting to receive a complaint and won't have any comments until our legal team has received and reviewed it."

"ViewSonic is aware of this legal action," the company said. "We are taking appropriate measures to protect our interests."