The Evolution of the Smartphone Patent War

The smartphone patent war began in 2009. At that time, the iPhone had been in the market for 2 years and Android had been operational for about a year. Nokia’s share price had fallen from its high of ~$40 per share in late 2007 to the $13-$15 range, while Apple and Google's stocks had been steadily rising since late 2008.

The opening salvo of the smartphone patent war was fired by Nokia, who in October of 2009 sued Apple for 10 patents related to the Global System for Mobile communications, wireless local area network, and Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (or GSM, WLAN, and UMTS, respectively). This started off the ongoing trend of suing and countersuing between all of the companies that would enter the smartphone patent war, as Apple would countersue Nokia in December 2009.

In 2010, other players in the smartphone industry began to enter the fray. Apple further sued HTC in March over patent infringements related to iPhone’s iOS user interface, to which HTC would respond with an ITC complaint against Apple in May. Oracle would sue Google over 7 patents related to Java in August 2010 and Microsoft would file an ITC complaint against Motorola in October.

Two notable battles in the smartphone patent war have been between Apple and Samsung, which kicked off in April of 2011, and Google and everybody else. Apple sued Samsung over patent and trademark infringements related to Samsung’s Galaxy line of smartphones and tablets, which it claimed looked suspiciously similar to Apple’s iPads and iPhones. Google has been playing defense ever since it lost to a bid of $4.5B USD on an auction of over 6,000 Nortel mobile-related telecomm patents to its competitors in June of 2011, resulting in its reactive strategy of acquiring patents from IBM and Motorola.

I further discuss my thoughts on this topic at the following link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZzOArTmakI