Mobile patent wars visualized with handy (or is that scary?) infographic

Do you ever stay awake at night, thinking to yourself, “There are just too many lawsuits in the mobile space; I can’t keep them all straight?” If so, do we have the infographic for you! The fine folks over at PC Magazine put together a chart outlining all of the current lines of legal attack.

Looking at the chart you can see how Apple has largely become a spoke in the hub of lawsuits – to a large degree this is because Apple has not only been overly generous with whom they sue, but they’ve also been suing to try and drive products off the market. As a result, companies have counter-sued Apple, rather than working out a licensing arrangement. Microsoft, it should be noted, has also sued or threatened to sue just as many people, but Microsoft’s M.O. is to make money from each sale, not prevent a product from being sold. As a result Microsoft lawsuits tend to settle up fairly quickly.

Apple’s role may actually be even more dominant then the infographic suggests. As we reported last year, Apple seems to be transferring some of its IP to shady patent trolling company Digitude Innovations, so they can serve as a proxy company to launch lawsuits with. Digitude can be seen on the left side of the chart, having launched additional lawsuits against almost every other major player on the chart.

Looking at Google, you can see that currently they are only fending off lawsuits from Oracle and gemalto, although they will inherit several more once they finish their acquisition of Motorola. If you want to know more, be sure to enlarge the chart below.


source: PCMag via Droid-life