Apple, Microsoft and Blackberry File a Lawsuit Against Samsung and Google

Happy Halloween, suckers.

Image via connectedmonster.com

It was a very scary Halloween after all for Google and Samsung.

Apple, Microsoft, Blackberry, Ericsson and Sony jointly own a company called Rockstar, which bought about 6,000 patents from telecom company, Nortel, for $4.5 billion. Google, at the time, tried to buy the patents as well, but lost out to Rockstar. Losing out to Nortel's patents spurred Google to buy Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion. Now, the Apple, Microsoft, and Blackberry team just dropped a lawsuit on Google, Samsung, Huawei and four other companies on Halloween, suing them for copyright infringement. Rockstar is accusing Google of violating seven patents that cover technology that matches Internet search terms with relevant advertising. The lawsuit accuses of Google of continuing to infringe upon patents that it missed out on after losing the auction for the Nortel patents. "Despite losing in its attempt to acquire the patents-in-suit at auction, Google has infringed and continues to infringe," the lawsuit says. Rockstar cleverly says that Google practically admitted to infringing upon the patents by attempting to buy them from Nortel.

This news comes after the latest figures put Android as having 81-percent of the global smartphone marketshare.

[via Reuters]

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