Nokia and Samsung have renewed a 5G patent deal, dating back to February 2016 and expired at the end of 2022, covering primarily smartphone technologies. The deal seems to have been amicably reached, unlike that 2016 agreement, which came as part of the settlement of a fierce licensing dispute. The fact that the patents concerned are mostly relating to technologies Samsung would use in smartphones rather than in 5G RAN equipment – where it competes with Nokia – might have sweetened the pill. Nokia has had a limited presence in the smartphone market since selling most of these activities to Microsoft, but it retains considerable power through its intellectual property (IP). Indeed, while Nokia’s competitors in the mobile infrastructure arena,…