Rockstar Consortium, an alliance of tech companies, has dropped infringement claims against Chinese telecommunication equipment provider Huawei.
The Rockstar Consortium comprises Apple, Microsoft, BlackBerry, Ericsson and Sony. On Tuesday, January 21, Huawei and Rockstar Consortium jointly filed a motion with the U.S. District Court of Northern California requesting dismissal of the lawsuit, which accused Huawei of violating patents the alliance acquired from Nortel Networks.
The filed documents do not indicate if Huawei has agreed to settle the lawsuit or take a licence from Rockstar or its subsidiary tech company MobileStar Technologies. However, market observers believe that it may be unlikely that Rockstar will let the Chinese company use the patents without paying a royalty bearing licence.
The Rockstar Consortium filed a number of lawsuits in October 2013, which separately accuse Huawei, Google and other Android device makers of infringing patents acquired by the alliance.
Google previously tried to buy the Nortel patents for around $4.4 billion, but lost in the auction to Rockstar Consortium. The alliance made a higher bid of $4.5 billion and acquired the patents. In February 2012, Google instead bought Motorola Mobility and its patents for $12.5 billion.
The Rockstar Consortium may have settled the lawsuit with Huawei, but the alliance still has a lawsuit pending against Google, which accuses the latter of infringing patents covering technology which relates Internet search terms with linked advertising. The Rockstar Consortium now has seven separate lawsuits against Google, Samsung, Asustek, HTC, LG Electronics, Pantech, and ZTE.
In December 2013, Google also filed a counterclaim against the Rockstar Consortium in the Northern District of California and said that the alliance has placed a "cloud on Google's Android platform [and] threatened Google's business and relationships with its customers and partners, as well as its sales of Nexus-branded Android devices."
Google also argued that the venue for the dispute would be in California as RockStar's key shareholders were based in the region. However, the lawsuit has been filed in Eastern Texas Court, which has historically been favored by patent infringement claimants.
It is getting increasingly important for companies to have patents to do business. Mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets have become the latest target of patent litigation due to the combination of features they possess, which may have been previously used in standalone devices.
