Intellectual Ventures sues Motorola Mobility over Android patents

PATENT LICENSING FIRM Intellectual Ventures is suing Motorola Mobility over a number of mobile patents used in its Android smartphones.

The legal dispute revolves around six patents relating to common technology employed in smartphones, such as file transfers, updates and remote data management, according to the BBC.

"We have a responsibility to our current customers and our investors to defend our intellectual property rights against companies such as Motorola Mobility who use them without a license," Intellectual Ventures said, adding that it had been in talks with Motorola since January.

The irony of the situation is that Google, which bought Motorola Mobility, pending approval, for $12.5bn in August, invested in Intellectual Ventures as recently as 2010. It most likely did so to ensure that rivals like Apple could not use patents to ban its partners' products as Apple is doing in Germany with the Samsung Galaxy Tab. But now that Intellectual Ventures has become one of the legal threats it hoped to avoid it must be questioning why it put any money into the company in the first place.

This move could have a huge impact on the industry, since Motorola Mobility's extensive patent collection, numbering 17,000 with a further 7,500 pending approval, was largely seen by analysts as a resource that Google could deploy to defend patent lawsuits against other Android partners. However, now that Motorola Mobility itself is the victim of a patent lawsuit, that casts its effectiveness as a defensive tool into doubt.

Google's acquisition of the company might have been the factor that triggered Intellectual Ventures' decision to sue Motorola Mobility, as Motorola previously struggled with financial problems whereas Google has extensive funds at its disposal that Intellectual Ventures obviously would have no problem accessing through an expensive patent licensing agreement.

Intellectual Ventures is seeking unspecified damages and will likely also want a licensing deal with Motorola Mobility, which will secure it additional long-term revenues. A court date has yet to be assigned. µ