HTC Buys Patents from Google - Sues Apple for Infringement

Published on: 8th Sep 2011

­Taiwan's HTC has filed another complaint with the USA's International Trade Commission (ITC) against Apple in the ongoing patent war between the two companies. Significantly though, the patents being cited were owned by Google until last week, suggesting that the Android backer is starting to get involved, albeit indirectly, the handset patent wars.

The Android patent battles have tended to steer clear of targeting Google directly, so the company now seems to be willing to use its small arsenal of patents to assist the handset vendors to defend themselves without getting directly involved in the lawsuits.

Google itself only bought the patents -- four from Motorola, three from Openwave Systems and two from Palm/HP -- last year.

In the latest lawsuit, HTC has alleged that Apple is infringing patents involving Wi-Fi and processor communication technologies, along with some user interface issues within mobile web browsers.

"We are taking this action against Apple to protect our intellectual property, our industry partners, and most importantly our customers that use HTC phones," said Grace Lei, general counsel of HTC.

There are three lawsuits between the two companies at the moment, and HTC was generally considered to be losing them. It's decision to buy S3 Graphics recently, which has been pressuring Apple over some unrelated patents was seen as an attempt to force Apple to settle the dispute.

Now that Google has been seen to intervene in the dispute, there is speculation that Apple, or other patent holders may now target the much larger search giant directly.

 

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