If you are getting confused about the whole smartphone patent war and have given up on making sense of it, no worries! PC Mag recently published two infographics, courtesy of Verizon, that helps to provide a great overview of the situation as it stands now. One thing is for sure: While Apple is going "thermonuclear" on Android manufacturers, it is also on the receiving end of many lawsuits. In fact, it is currently dealing with 9 lawsuits AGAINST them at this moment in time. Motorola has 4, Samsung has 4 and HTC has 5 against it.
Most of the suits involve huge technology companies suing each other. Of the names you might not know, "Graphics Properties Holdings," has patents from the now-defunct Silicon Graphics, an early pioneer in 3D computer graphics. Gemalto is the world's largest manufacturer of SIM cards. InterDigital is a 40-year-old company that helped invent many basic mobile phone technologies. VirnetX is a security company wrangling with Apple over VPN access technologies.
Another variable to the equation comes from a recent report by TechCrunch on Apple's linkage to a patent holding firm called Digitude Innovations which has also been busy suing RIM, HTC, Motorola, LG, Samsung, Sony, Amazon, Nokia, and Pantech (except Apple). Apparently, Apple has been closely partnering up with Digitude and even handing over some of its own patents to the company! Now, why would Apple be held to ransom and meekly hand over its patents to a patent holding company? I guess we will never really know the real answer to that. However, it definitely portrays Apple in a bad light over this whole patent fiasco. As TechCrunch put it: Apple making a deal with the devil so that it can win this war?
So, how will this patent war end?
According to an article from PC Mag:
"On a panel at the State of the Net Conference in Washington, DC this week, I spoke with Judge Theodore Essex of the International Trade Commission, who rules on smartphone patent cases; Amy Hammer, assistant general counsel for Verizon; and Ray Chen of the US Patent & Trademark Office. They all agreed the prospects for peace soon are bleak. The best possible outcome is mutually assured destruction, if the various smartphone players each assemble enough critical patents that they become unwilling to sue each other."
[via PC Mag]
If the only way to resolve this is for smartphone players to assemble enough critical patents to counteract each other, then Google seems to be on the right path, although the proposed merger between Google and Motorola is still pending approval.
The second infographics shows the number of patents that each of these companies are holding. All the smartphone manufacturers seem to be pretty stocked up on patent volume, except for HTC and ZTE. Perhaps a sign of weakness for these companies in this ongoing war?
