Before his death, Apple CEO Steve Jobs said he wanted to “go thermonuclear war” against Android, and now it appears Apple has teamed up with a number of other tech firms to launch a patent war against the operating system. The Rockstar Consortium, a joint venture owned by Apple, Microsoft, BlackBerry, Ericsson and Sony, has filed a number of patent lawsuits relating to the Android platform. They’re not only suing Google, but also handset manufacturers like Samsung, LG Electronics, HTC and Huawei.
The Consortium charges that Android infringes on several patents which the joint venture purchased from Nortel in its bankruptcy auction. The most noteworthy is a patent that relates to Google’s practice of matching search terms to mobile ads.
In the auction, Google bid $4.4 million for the Nortel patents, but The Rockstar Consortium bid $4.5 million.
