Apple And Motorola Battle It Out Over Patents

With competition in the mobile market on an all time high, technologies and services are bound to overlap, resulting in copyright and patent issues. Earlier, these disputes were settled without much hullabaloo but times have changed. Everyone wants a piece of the pie, without losing out on any front.

Sometime last month, Motorola sued Apple with claims that the wide range of technology that Apple used in its products – the iPod, iTouch, iPhone and even some Macs were infringing on Motorola’s patents. Not to be bogged down by such claims, Apple countered by suing Motorola in turn for six of its own patents a few days ago. The squabble has entered into phase two with Apple firing two lawsuits claiming that Motorola’s Android phones – Droid, Droid 2, Droid X, Cliq, Cliq XT, BackFlip, Devour A555, Devour i1 and Charm infringe a total of six multitouch and OS patents. Those who want to have a look at the patents, here is the link.

Apple had come to the limelight in this patent issue when it had slapped a claim against HTC in March this year. This “iPhone” patent, as it was popularly called, claimed that HTC was copying the architecture and hardware design of the iPhone in its multitouch phones. It already had pending issues with Nokia. Now it has dragged Motorola also in this tussle. All these are thinly veiled attacks on Apple’s prime competitor, Google, rather than on individual cellphone manufacturers. With Android being the prime OS in most of Motorola’s and HTC’s smartphones, it is expected that Google will come out in support for both. Till now, Apple and Google are not openly at loggerheads, but the way things are going, it won’t be long before the two giants battle it out openly for global supremacy.

Coming back to the patents themselves, the issue will take quite some amount of time to settle. If Apple wins even one of the claims, then it will have a domino effect on Motorola as the same technology has been used in almost all its phones and Motorola could end up paying heavily for this. Though, I am of the opinion that all this is just to bring Motorola and Apple to light and at the end of the day, no one has to pay the other party anything. There are bound to be small differences even in the same technology used by both parties and that kind of nullifies the claim.

What does all this mean to you, the consumer? Well, nothing much, actually. Your opinion on which mobile to buy would not be influenced by whether the company is involved in a legal battle regarding copyright issues. The whole fiasco adds wood to the pent up fire between Apple and Google. We can only wait and watch how this turns out.