Andre Yoskowitz
1 Nov 2013 0:20
Rockstar, the consortium that purchased Nortel patents for $4.5 billion in 2011, has sued a number of major wireless industry players for patent infringement.
The group has sued Samsung, Google, HTC, Huawei, Asus and ZTE in the U.S. Rockstar is a group consisting of Apple, Microsoft, Blackberry, Ericsson and Sony. The consortium outbid Google for the patents, forcing the search giant to purchase Motorola Mobility for its patent trove.
Google has been accused of infringing on 7 separate patents, many of which cover tech related to Internet search and relevant advertising. All of the other companies build Android devices, which run on Google software and are deeply integrated with Google services.
While the patents were up for auction, Google started with an initial $900 million bid and repeatedly increased their bid until $4.4 billion, eventually losing to Rockstar, who was willing to keep the war up.
Rockstar is seeking large damages from the companies, as they claim the infringement has been willful.