The Patent ‘Dogfight’ Continues: Motorola Hits Apple With New Suits

By Ashby Jones

The pace with which patent-litigation related to mobile phones continues to pile up is nothing short of bewildering. Last week, in fact, we devoted a post to trying to unpack what was going on.

On Wednesday, it continued, with new allegations lodged by one huge player against another. Motorola on Wednesday filed a host of patent-infringement complaints against Apple related to early-stage technologies developed by Motorola.

The Illinois cell-phone maker alleges that Apple’s iPhone, iPad, iPhone Touch and some Macintosh computers illegally use Motorola’s technology. Click here for the WSJ story; here for the Bloomberg story; here, here and here for the complaints filed in federal court (another was filed with the U.S. International Trade Commission).

The complaints are the latest developments in long-running disputes involving several key competitors in the wireless industry. Everybody’s jockeying hard for position.

“If they have these patents, they do everything to slow these companies down,” said Mark Kesslen, a patent lawyer with Lowenstein Sandler. “It’s just a dog fight out there.”

The Motorola lawsuits come as the line between computer manufacturers and mobile-device makers blurs, with new entrants such as Apple and Hewlett-Packard making bigger moves in the mobile sector, while traditional handset makers such as Samsung Electronics enter the tablet market. The moves have caused new rivalries between competitors such as Apple and Motorola, or Oracle versus Google, which created the Android mobile operating system.

Kesslen expects Apple to retaliate with its own lawsuit against Motorola shortly. Apple declined to comment on the lawsuits.

Lawyers from Quinn Emanuel in Chicago are representing Motorola.

In other Apple news, the WSJ reported earlier Wednesday that Apple would begin mass-producing iPhones that were compatible with Verizon Wireless’s network, with the intent to sell them in the first half of 2011.