Nortel which went bankrupt back in 2009, decided to sell off its patent portfolio in 2011, the patents were bought by a consortium of technology companies which operate under the name Rockstar Bidco.
Rockstar Bidco is owed by Microsoft, Apple, Ericsson and Sony, and the companies paid $4.5 billion for more than 6,000 Notel patents related to a range of technologies, including mobile and 4G.
Google also bid for the patents buy were outbid by the Apple, Microsoft, Sony and Ericsson consortium, and now they have decided to sue Google and their Android OS.
Rockstar have filed eight lawsuits in the US federal court against Google, Android and a number of technology companies that make Android devices.
The list of companies that the lawsuits have been filed against include Google, Asus, HTC, Samsung, LG, ZTE, Pantech and Huawei, and the lawsuit against Google revolves around six patents, whilst the lawsuit against the Android manufacturers is for seven patents.
This could end up getting messy for Google and the various Android manufacturers, and they all may have to end up paying liscense fees to the Rockstar consortium.
Of course we expect that this will have to play out in court for quite a while, it will be interesting to see what happens, and Google does have a portfolio of patents which it acquired with the purchase of Motorola that it could possibly use against the likes of Apple, Microsoft and the other companies that own Rockstar.
Source Ars Technica, TechMeme
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