Motorola faces patent lawsuit from Intellectual Ventures

Here we go again with yet another patent infringement lawsuit, and this time Motorola seems to be the target. Patent licensing company, Intellectual Ventures, has filed a lawsuit against Motorola, claiming that the company had infringed upon six of their patents.

The company currently owns about 35,000 patents and they claimed that they approached Motorola about licensing the patents back in January, but apparently Motorola had refused. For those wondering, these patent infringements affect several of Motorola’s products, such as the Atrix, Photon 4G, Milestone, Triumph and Brute i680 (among others).

Interestingly, Google is an investor in Intellectual Ventures, and as we all know, Google has announced plans to acquire Motorola’s mobile phone division several months back. It seems rather like cruel irony that one of Google’s investments is now suing a company that Google not only plans to acquire, but at the same time makes handsets for Google’s Android platform.

While Google isn’t fully responsible in this lawsuit, it will be interesting to see what they will do about it. Will they step in or will they let Motorola handle this by themselves?