Some of HTC's Google-sourced patents for the counterclaim against Apple go back to Palm

Today we found out that HTC has sourced nine patents from Google to file counterclaims against Apple's patent infringement lawsuit. HTC says it paid for them, but no price was disclosed, and Google has every incentive to help its Android OEMs now that it can fight back with the patents it got from Motorola, IBM and other places.

Larry Page is obviously not too worried about Samsung, which has the second strongest patent portfolio after Microsoft, but HTC might have been left to the wolves if not for the S3 acquisition, a purely patent play, and now the nine patents sourced from Google. In hastily put together motions HTC updated its ITC lawsuit against Apple with five patents, and filed a completely new infringement case in Delaware for four more.

The five patents it added to the ITC complaint and its sister lawsuit in Delaware range include ones dating as far back as Palm:

    "U.S. Patent No. 6,473,006 on a "method and apparatus for zoomed display of characters entered from a telephone keypad"; originally filed by Phone-com, which assigned it to Openwave, then sold to a French company named Purple Labs, which sold it on to Myriad's French subsidiary (Myriad has Java-related litigation going with Oracle), sold by Myriad to Google last year and by Google to HTC on August 29, 2011 (recorded on September 1)

    U.S. Patent No. 6,708,214 on a "hypermedia identifier input mode for a mobile communication device"; the assignment history of this one mirrors that of the previous patent

    U.S. Patent No. 6,868,283 on a "technique allowing a status bar user response on a portable device graphic user interface"; originally a Palm patent, transferred a couple of times within the Palm group, then sold to Access (first the U.S. subsidiary, then the Japanese parent company), acquired by Google last year, sold and assigned to HTC on same dates as the previous patents in this group

    U.S. Patent No. 7,289,772, same title as the previous patent, originally filed by Palmsource, then sold to Access, Google and finally HTC along the same path as the previous patent

    U.S. Patent No. 7,020,849 on a "dynamic display for communication devices"; originally filed by Openwave, then sold to Purple Labs, Myriad France, Google and HTC along the same path as the first two patents in this group"

The four patents that comprise a completely new lawsuit, again in Delaware, represent the new blood from Motorola:

    "U.S. Patent No. 5,418,524 on a "method and apparatus for over-the-air upgrading of radio modem application software"; originally filed by Motorola, sold by Motorola to Google last year, then by Google to HTC on August 29, 2011 (recorded on September 1)

    U.S. Patent No. 5,630,152 on a "communication protocol between master and slave device with register information sharing"; same path as the previous patent

    U.S. Patent No. 5,630,159 on a "method and apparatus for personal attribute selection having delay management method and apparatus for preference establishment when preferences in a donor device are unavailable"; same path as the previous patent except that a company named Tudor Empire in California bought it from Motorola and sold it to Google; that may be an acquisition company owned and controlled by Google, or otherwise acting on Google's behalf

    U.S. Patent No. 5,302,947 on a "method and apparatus for loading a software program from a radio modem into an external computer"; same assignment path as the first two patents in this group"

Don't ask us why the Motorola patents merit a dedicated case against Apple, but they do sound themed around communication protocols, and thus are broadly filed against most of Apple's gadgets like computers, phones and tablets, as well as the accompanying software. This seems like a mere defensive play on HTC's side, so it remains to be seen if the court will take into consideration patents acquired just days before the filing.

source: FOSSPatents