Patents: Intellectual Ventures attacks Motorola Mobility

Intellectual Ventures patents have been violated with the company filing legal proceedings against Motorola Mobility (purchased by Google) for violating six patents relating to mobile technologies. The irony in this story is that Google is one of the investors in Intellectual Ventures.

There seems to be no end in sight for the ongoing patent war which is currently raging in the mobile industry. Each month sees new law suits filed for patent violations in the search of damages or the blocking of infringing handsets from being sold when it is two handset manufacturers in dispute.

Patent holdings company Intellectual Ventures, who doesn’t actually make anything but instead holds patents and collects royalties, has attacked Motorola Mobility – recently acquired by Google although the acquisition is yet to receive the green light from regulators), accusing them of violating six patents.

Intellectual Ventures confirms that they have already held negotiations with Motorola, without success, to claim the royalties they believe they are owed. They have now moved on to legal action to obtain the missing royalties.


Obtaining licensing rights
The method is classic, with patent holding companies coming out aggressive to obtain just cause, with such actions often being undertaken by what are known as patent trolls or companies who only exist to collect royalties.

Numerous handset manufacturers have preferred to negotiate agreements directly with Intellectual Ventures rather than risk finding themselves on the wrong side of this kind of legal filing. This is the case for HTC, Samsung and even Research in Motion.

The six patents in question are from various fields – software and hardware, file transfer methods and even remote access. The irony of this case is that the patent holding company was actually partly financed by… Google.

It is for this reason that certain observers believe that the protection of Android (some patents listed directly concern the mobile platform) has been largely underestimated by the search giant.