Today, the Finnish cellphone giant, which has been struggling to develop a worthy competitor to the iPhone, filed suit against Apple, claiming the popular smart phone infringes upon a number of Nokia patents.

Specifically at issue here: 10 patents covering various wireless data, speech coding, security and encryption technologies. Nokia claims that every iPhone model shipped since 2007 has violated them.

“The basic principle in the mobile industry is that those companies who contribute in technology development to establish standards create intellectual property, which others then need to compensate for,” said Ilkka Rahnasto, vice president of legal & intellectual property at Nokia (NOK). “Apple is also expected to follow this principle. By refusing to agree appropriate terms for Nokia’s intellectual property, Apple is attempting to get a free ride on the back of Nokia’s innovation.”

To that point, Nokia says it has entered into license agreements with about 40 companies for these patents. Only Apple (AAPL) has refused. The obvious endgame here, then, is to force the iPhone maker to change its mind.

“We believe that Nokia is not seeking an injunction; rather, we believe that the company has been in talks with Apple concerning a patent royalty payment for over a year,” Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster said in a bulletin to clients. “With today’s announcement, it appears that the companies have not come to a resolution and Nokia is attempting to hasten the process. Nokia is likely looking to obtain a patent royalty of 1-2 percent ($6 to $12) on every iPhone sold in compensation for its IPs concerning GSM, 3G and WiFi technologies on mobile devices.”

Interesting that news of the suit comes just days after Apple announced its most successful financial quarter ever at a time when Nokia is posting nasty losses.

I’ve asked Apple for comment and will update here if I’m offered one.

“We are no longer planning to pursue the acquisition as there has been no progress since we withdrew our offer as of Oct. 22, 2008,” the company said in a filing with the Korea Exchange. The announcement comes after the two companies inked a new seven-year NAND flash-memory license agreement, one that will see Samsung paying about half the royalty amount it paid previously.

That’s the word from Nokia, which vehemently denied reports this morning that it is just months away from launching its first mobile phone based on Google’s mobile OS. “There is no truth to this story whatsoever,” the company said in a statement. “It is a well known fact that Symbian is our platform of choice for smartphones.”

Indeed. It was a just a little over a year ago that Nokia (NOK) invested some $410 million in the platform, establishing the Symbian Foundation and releasing the Symbian OS as a royalty-free open mobile platform. It seems unlikely that the company would jeopardize that effort by rolling out an Android touchscreen phone at its annual conference. Even more unlikely when you consider that Symbian is by far the world’s leading smartphone software platform. It might not have as much buzz as Google’s (GOOG) Android or Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone 3.0 or Palm’s (PALM) new webOS, but Symbian still claims 47 percent of the mobile OS market.