Patent-licensing firm Intellectual Ventures, founded by former Microsoft chief technology officer Nathan Myhrvold, sued Motorola Mobility Thursday, alleging its mobile phones infringe six patents.
The suit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware, seeks unspecified monetary damages as well as a ruling to bar Motorola Mobility from using the patents in question. The case is docket no. 11-CV-00908.
Motorola Mobility declined to comment.
Intellectual Ventures, founded in 2000, owns more than 35,000 patents and has earned more than $2 billion in licensing fees.
Motorola Mobility itself holds the rights to some 17,000 patents. The company's intellectual property portfolio is the primary asset Google is seeking to acquire with its $12.5 billion bid for Motorola Mobility.
Intellectual Ventures chief litigation counsel Melissa Finocchio said in a statement: "Intellectual Ventures has successfully signed licensing agreements with many of the top handset manufacturers in the world, and has been in discussions with Motorola Mobility for some time. Unfortunately, we have been unable to reach agreement on a license."
She continued, "We have a responsibility to our current customers and our investors to defend our intellectual property rights against companies such as Motorola Mobility who use them without a license. Our goal continues to be to provide companies with access to our portfolio through licensing and sales, but we will not tolerate ongoing infringement of our patents to the detriment of our current customers and our business."
According to Intellectual Ventures' lawsuit, the firm initially approached Motorola Mobility in January 2011 about licensing its patents.
The six patents in the suit are U.S. Patent Nos.:
* 7,810,144, "File transfer system for direct transfer between computers";
* 6,412,953, "Illumination device and image projection apparatus comprising the device";
* 7,409,450, "Transmission control protocol/internet protocol (TCP/IP) packet-centric wireless point to multi-point (PtMP) transmission system architecture";
* 7,120,462, "Portable computing, communication and entertainment device with central processor carried in a detachable handset";
* 6,557,054, "Method and system for distributing updates by presenting directory of software available for user installation that is not already installed on user station"; and
* 6,658,464, "User station software that controls transport, storage, and presentation of content from a remote source."
