HTC patents are at the center of lawsuit against Apple ~ GoAndroid

Sunday, September 11, 2011

HTC patents are at the center of lawsuit against Apple

10:45 AM

Simranpal SIngh

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It’s getting harder and harder to try and keep up on this one. Google bought Motorola Mobility and that came with some patents which Google then sold to HTC including 5 others. Then HTC used those nine patents to file a lawsuit in court against Apple. Make sense? As the patents fly around like currency in the mobile world and lawsuits pop up all over the place, the mobile competition keeps getting more aggressive as each company tries to position itself higher on the list. The patents were sold to HTC on August 29th and lawsuit was filed by September 7th.
The lawsuit HTC filed against Apple comes after Apple has already filed similar lawsuits against HTC, but because Google has padded HTC with the new patents, this new lawsuit is looking to send a new message to Apple. Of the nine patents that HTC is citing in the lawsuit, none of them actually originated from Google. Two of them came from Palm and three more from the Openwave System. The patents that seem to be getting the most attention are the ones from Motorola that Google acquired with the $12.5 billion purchase of Motorola Mobility. Google reportedly called the move the only way they could protect Android from patent attack. Motorola Mobility controlled more than 17,000 patents at the time of the purchase.
The four patents that Google owns were transferred before Motorola split into two branches and all were acquired before the end of March of this year. With the four patents, HTC added five other patents in the lawsuit and the International Trade Commission. In the meantime, the patent lawsuits are flying around but Google has never been sued by Apple in any way directly. Google has been on watch for allegedly sitting by and not willing to protect partners that make Android devices.
Some experts say that by Google stepping in to help HTC against Apple, they are increasing the chances that Apple might just go after Google directly. Google has applied for over 1,000 different patents since January of this year and vowed to build on that number in order to protect their intellectual property rights. With the 17,000 they acquired with Motorola Mobility, that seems like a pretty good defense system to build on.