In a patent lawsuit party with nearly everyone invited, the group of companies that owns thousands of Nortel patents has filed multiple suits against Samsung, Google, HTC, Huawei and four other companies.
Reuters reports that Rockstar, the group that in 2011 successfully bid $4.5 billion in a bankruptcy auction for Nortel’s patents, has filed suit for patent infringement in the U.S. District Court in Texas. Rockstar is co-owned by Apple, Microsoft, BlackBerry, Sony and Ericsson.
According to the report, Google is accused of infringing on seven patents covering search term-advertisement matching.
In 2011, Google opened the Nortel auction with a stalking-horse bid of $900 million but eventually lost out to Rockstar.
At the time, Google had decided to bid on the patents to hopefully protect itself from lawsuits, claiming that a winning bid would be a “disincentive for others to sue Google.” Now the company’s fears have come true.
