A New Age of Patent Lending

Asia-based smartphone company HTC is locked in several patent battles with Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL). Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) has offered aid to HTC by “loaning” it patents that should help counter Apple’s claims about iPhone inventions. It is a novel way for companies to join together to fight a common enemy.

HTC bought nine patents from Google last week, and Google got them from Motorola Mobility (NYSE: MMI), Palm and Openwave (NASDAQ: OPWV).

Bloomberg reports that “HTC now has more ammunition in its fight to fend off multiple patent-infringement claims lodged by Apple that contend phones running Google’s Android operating system copy the iPhone.”

The new patent “lend/lease” plan may be only the beginning of the legal struggles between HTC and Apple. Courts could be asked to rule whether a company can gain patents it did not originally file after a suit has begun. It is open to interpretation as to whether a firm can arm itself with intellectual property from an ally. If so, several smartphone makers may begin to move patents to win favorable legal judgments.

The HTC and Google deal could change the landscape of fights over phone features. Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) has banded with Nokia (NYSE: NOK) in an attempt to take market share in the smartphone sector — one in which neither has been successful. Microsoft maintains one of the largest patent portfolios in the world.

Research In Motion (NASDAQ: RIMM) has a large number of patents to protect BlackBerry devices and the operating systems that run them. Investors have pressured the Canadian firm to sell some of its patents to make money. And Google has bought Motorola Mobility in a move that many on Wall St. say is aimed more at the ability to increase the search firm’s patents than to get into the smartphone hardware business.

There could be almost no end to new suits and challenges to the validity of product IP if patents can be moved around as easily as HTC and Google assume they can be.

Douglas A. McIntyre