Intellectual Ventures files suit against Motorola

Intellectual Ventures (IV) have filed a patent infringement complaint against Motorola, following talks in which the two companies failed to reach an agreement.

The company first approached Motorola in January. The complaint says that at this time IV held a number of discussions with the phone manufacturer concerning patents that it owns.

IV explained to Motorola which patents they felt were being infringed upon and asked that they pay a licence fee for them.

The suit alleges that “despite Intellectual Ventures’ good faith efforts to negotiate a business arrangement, Motorola has failed and refused to licence Intellectual Ventures’ on reasonable terms and continues to use those inventions without permission.”

“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,” said Melissa Finocchio, Chief Litigation Counsel for IV.

“Our goal continues to be to provide companies with access to our portfolio through licensing and sales, but we will not tolerate ongoing infringement of our patents to the detriment of our current customers and our business.”

She also pointed out that the company has already signed licensing agreements with “many of the top handset manufacturers in the world.”

The complaint asks that infringement on six patented items be taken into account by the court and asks that appropriate damages are paid.

Interestingly, Google have a financial interest in IV and of course, have recently announced plans to acquire Motorola Mobility at a cost of $12.5 billion.

The search engine giant, who don’t usually go in for buying hardware, explained that this purchase is intended to “supercharge Android.”

However, Google made the announcement regarding Motorola in August, long after IV began its bickering with the phone company. So it would seem that Google must have been aware of the complaint.

It is thought that IV hold the rights to around 35,000 patents and last year they signed a deal with HTC, allowing them access to around 30,000 of them.

IV have been accused of buying intellectual property rights in order to force money out of large corporations.

However, the founder, former Microsoft chief technology officer Nathan Mhyvold, maintains that they are simply protecting the rights of inventors, who would otherwise not see a fair sum for their innovations.