HTC Sues Apple Using Patents Obtained From Google Last Week

I think what they should do is just mutually agree to make a big bonfire, burn a couple billion in cash each, and then get back to business as usual.

Is there anyone <i>not</i> simultaneously suing and getting sued over patents? It's like a war zone where each company tries hard to screw over every other company in their space. Then they go collaborate on Web standards. If these were people instead of businesses you'd have to assume they had mental illnesses.

It's difficult to consider this an attack while, previously, Apple sued HTC.<p>Honestly, I don't know who started it, but this doesn't benefit anyone. Well, maybe some lawyers...

It'd be nice to see the end of commoditized patent holding. E.g. Only the creators of a technology can benefit from the patent process. The "proxied from a third party to sue a second party" without any original innovation is a pathetic puppet show.<p>Create or die.

After all, it seems Google bought Motorola for patents and attacking Apple and co'. I know, Google is not directly suing Apple, but the act of giving those patents to HTC constitutes to suing Apple.

If you're interested in these patent issues, you should add FOSS Patents (<a href="http://fosspatents.blogspot.com/" rel="nofollow">http://fosspatents.blogspot.com/</a>) to your RSS reader.<p>Florian has the list of patents being asserted by HTC and some analysis of them at <a href="http://fosspatents.blogspot.com/2011/09/these-are-patents-google-gave-to-htc-to.html" rel="nofollow">http://fosspatents.blogspot.com/2011/09/these-are-patents-go...</a>

Anyone have a brief description of the patents that are being thrown around here. It would be nice to see how "legit" they are.<p>It might make an interesting little website. PatentShootout.com (take it and run with it)

Wonder what was the price that was paid. Don't think they were given away free (as in beer), otherwise Google executives themselves would face lawsuits. Breach of fiduciary duty and all that.

Now, if Apple and HTC reach a cross-licensing agreement that includes these patents, could apple later sue another android manufacturer using them?

Do we know how much HTC bought these patents for?

Awesome. This obvious patent crap has to go. Unless real blood is shed the government will do nothing...

It's either 5 decades of patent of cold war or a few years of all out patent war, after which the major players will beg US authorities to change the law.<p>This is insane. So much money and time wasted over legal monopolies such as "multi function buttons", "dropdowns on a webpage", "rounded corners", etc, etc, etc.<p>Now even Google is dragged into this crap hole by moronic companies such as Oracle and Apple.

It will be amusing to see how this is justified from people who have previously claimed Google has played no role in offensive patent warfare. I don't blame them for doing it. The system is what it is. Google has to arm their client-states with weapons at this point. Until the laws change they would be stupid not to.