You didn’t think HTC and Samsung were just going to get sued and take it laying down, did you? The companies with a large Android portfolio have signed cross-licensing agreements with Intellectual Ventures and are prepared for a mobile patent war now.
HTC and Samsung will now have access to the patent portfolio of Intellectual Ventures, which includes more than 30,000 IP assets. Intellectual Ventures has sometimes been called a patent troll because it holds many patents in various areas and is not afraid to use them.
This gives HTC and Samsung the threat of mutually-assured destruction if some company like Apple or Microsoft wants to take them to court over patents because Intellectual Ventures will likely have a patent that can be used to defend HTC or Samsung.
“HTC is one of the fastest growing companies in the mobile phone industry, and it understands the value of actively protecting its invention rights,” said Peter Detkin, founder and vice chairman, Intellectual Ventures, in a prepared statement. “Given HTC’s innovativeness in developing some of the industry’s first smartphones and its continued development of some of the world’s most advanced products, HTC is forward-thinking with its IP practices and is working with IV to mitigate its IP risk.”
There’s no word on how much this cost Samsung and the other company but it’s likely worth the cost to avoid more lawsuits. These patent suits often drag on for years and years and even if a company wins in court, the legal fees and headaches can make it somewhat of a Pyrrhic victory.
These things generally wind up with cross-licensing agreements, even after years in court. The threat of a strong countersuit may actually lead to a slowdown in the explosion of mobile patent lawsuits we’ve seen lately. I would absolutely love that because I hate writing about these cases.
