Intellectual Ventures, set up by Microsoft’s former employee, has sued mobile phones maker Motorola Mobility over patents used in Android smartphones made by Motorola.
Recently, search engine company Google has announced that it will acquire Motorola.
Intellectual Ventures is partly bankrolled by Google, said the BBC. The company said that it filed the lawsuit after talks, which began in January 2011, over a licensing deal could not succed.
Intellectual Ventures said, "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 license."
Intellectual Ventures has sued Motorola over six patents, including perform file transfers, updates and remote data management technology, which the company alleges Motorola is using in its smartphones running on Google’s Android OS.
Intellectual Ventures is a company dealing with patents. Its founder is Microsoft’s former chief technology officer Nathan Myhrvold. The company has nearly 35,000 patents by buying intellectual property from inventors. The BBC said that the source of income for Intellectual Ventures by signing licensing deals with hi-tech firms that use the patented technologies.
In the lawsuit, Intellectual Ventures is now seeking a trial and unspecified damages.
The legal action against Motorola has sparked fresh concerns about Google’s ability to defend Android partners.
