A consortium of Apple, Microsoft, BlackBerry, Ericsson and Sony filed a lawsuit against Google, Samsung Electronics, LG Electronics, Pantech, HTC, ASUS, Huawei and ZTE over former patents of Nortel Networks at the U.S. District Court in Texas on Friday (Korean time), industry sources revealed.
The consortium, dubbed Rockstar, had purchased 6,000 patents belonging to the telecommunication company during its four-day bankruptcy auction in 2011.
Google had attempted to attain this same portfolio with an initial bid of $900 million followed by bids of witty numbers that puzzled its competitors such as the distance between the earth and the sun, famous math constants and even pi.
But it eventually lost the much-heated bidding war against Rockstar after its bid of $4.4 billion was topped by the consortium’s bid at $4.5 billion ― Google had planned to invest no more than $4 billion, according to sources.
Google then went on to secure Motorola Mobility, which also holds an ample number of the patents, for $12.5 billion.
Rockstar, however, has now filed several lawsuits against Google ― and other companies that use Google’s Android operating system ― for patent infringement.
The seven disputed patents involve the technology that helps match search terms with relevant advertisements, according to court papers.
“Despite losing in its attempt to acquire the patents-in-suit at auction, Google has infringed and continues to infringe the patents-in-suit,” it said in the filing.
A Google spokesperson declined to comment while representatives for Samsung and others could not be immediately reached, sources said.
