Motorola Mobility targeted in latest Android patent infringement lawsuit

Motorola Mobility has become the latest company to be targeted by a lawsuit alleging patent infringement in the Android mobile operating system.

Patent holding firm Intellectual Ventures has filed suit in the US claiming that Motorola handsets violate patents related to hardware and software components.

Intellectual Ventures claims that a number of other handset vendors have already agreed to license deals on the patents, and that the company was previously in talks with Motorola.

"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 licence," said Intellectual Ventures chief litigation counsel Melissa Finocchio.

"Our goal continues to be to provide companies with access to our portfolio through licensing and sales, but we will not tolerate ongoing infringement of our patents to the detriment of our current customers and our business."

A spokesperson from Motorola declined to comment, citing a policy against discussing ongoing legal matters.

The filing is the latest in a growing number of cases surrounding Android and the hardware vendors that use the platform.

Google and Oracle remain tangled in a suit over the use of Java components in Android, while Samsung is in a series of international legal battles with Apple over patent infringement in its Galaxy Tablet systems.

Intellectual property expert Florian Mueller noted that the Motorola Mobility case carries an extra touch of irony because the patent holding firm counts Google as one of its financial backers.

"Intellectual Ventures has received funding from Google itself, and is now suing Google's most expensive acquisition target for the infringement of patents, some of which are software patents that read on Google's Android, or at least on Motorola Mobility's extensions running on top of Android," Mueller said in a blog post.

"In other words, Google does not even protect Android device makers against [non-practicing entities] it invests in."