Apple Countersues Motorola Over Multi-touch

The legal squabble between Motorola and Apple has entered phase two. Now, Apple has filed two different lawsuits in Wisconsin Western District Court against Motorola for infringing multi-touch related patents reported Patently Apple. At least one of the six different patents related to multi-touch and some core OS level functions were allegedly infringed by Motorola in the following handsets - Droid, Droid 2, Droid X, Cliq, Cliq XT, BackFlip, Devour A555, Devour i1, and Charm. 

Last month, Motorola had filed a lawsuit against Apple for infringing up to 18 Motorola owned patents in iPhone, iPod touch, Macs, MobileMe and the App Store. Now Apple has counter-sued Motorola for infringing six more patents of with mostly focused on the multi-touch. Here's a list of patents that are allegedly infringed:

• 7,812,828: Ellipse Fitting for Multi-Touch Surfaces
• 7,663,607: Multipoint Touchscreen
• 5,379,430: Object-Oriented System Locator System
• 7,497,949: Touch Screen Device, Method, and Graphical User Interface for Determining Commands by Applying Heuristics
• 6,493,002: Method and Apparatus for Displaying and Accessing Control and Status Information in a Computer System
• 5,838,315: Support for Custom User-Interaction Elements in a Graphical, Event-Driven Computer System

These patent wars usually take years to be solved legally unless both parties decide to agree on mutual terms. Counting Motorola's lawsuit about 18 patents and Apple's counter-lawsuit of 6 patents, in all 24 patents are said to be infringed. None of these patents are repeated. 

Along with that, Apple also said that Motorola has infringed these patents willfully and deliberately. Hence, if the judgement favors Apple, then Motorola will have to pay up to three times the damages borne by Apple due to the lawsuit. The entire patent infringement scene has become hodge-podge and Apple has claimed that Nokia and HTC too have infringed its multi-touch patent. Apple COO Tim Cook warned the competition during a financial conference saying: "We like competition as long as they don't rip off our IP. And if they do, we will go after anyone who does."

As long as the devices are concerned, I don't think it's going to affect sales of Motorola or Apple handsets directly. Consumers won't restrain from buying the handsets that suit their needs. In short, life goes on for consumers while companies still continue the lawsuit tug-of-war in the legal open grounds.