What happens when you sue an industry giant? Simple, they sue you back and try to cripple you for something which they invented. That’s exactly what happened between Motorola and Apple. Motorola Filed 18 lawsuits against Apple for infringing patents and Apple counter sued them for six multi-touch related patents, which are being used in almost every famous smartphone which Motorola has ever made including the Driod X.

iPhone-4-vs-Motorola-Droid-x

If Apple wins this lawsuit, Motorola is somewhat pwned. Imagine all the smartphones which Motorola has ever made are redesigned without multi touch in them, sounds untechnological ain’t it? These are the patents which Motorola ripped through by Apple:

One: Apple, Inc patent titled: Ellipse Fitting for Multi-Touch Surfaces:Patent Abstract: Apparatus and methods are disclosed for simultaneously tracking multiple finger and palm contacts as hands approach, touch, and slide across a proximity-sensing, multi-touch surface. Identification and classification of intuitive hand configurations and motions enables unprecedented integration of typing, resting, pointing, scrolling, 3D manipulation, and handwriting into a versatile, ergonomic computer input device.

Two: Apple, Inc patent titled: Multipoint Touchscreen: Patent Abstract: A touch panel having a transparent capacitive sensing medium configured to detect multiple touches or near touches that occur at the same time and at distinct locations in the plane of the touch panel and to produce distinct signals representative of the location of the touches on the plane of the touch panel for each of the multiple touches is disclosed.

Three: Taligent, Inc patent titled: Object-Oriented System Locator System: Patent Abstract: A method and system for adding system components (documents, tools, fonts, libraries, etc.) to a computer system without running an installation program. A location framework is employed to locate system components whose properties match those specified in search criteria. The framework receives notification from the system when system components whose properties match the search criteria are added to or removed from the system.

Four: Apple, Inc, patent titled: Touch Screen Device, Method, and Graphical User Interface for Determining Commands by Applying Heuristics: Apple’s invention generally relates to electronic devices with touch screen displays, and more particularly, to electronic devices that apply heuristics to detected user gestures on a touch screen display to determine commands.

Five: Apple Computer, Inc. patent titled: Method and Apparatus for Displaying and Accessing Control and Status Information in a Computer System: Apple’s invention generally relates to the field of computer systems; particularly, the present invention relates to displaying a status and control function bar or window to enable access of user selected indicia to a computer system user.

Six: Apple Computer, Inc. patent titled: Support for Custom User-Interaction Elements in a Graphical, Event-Driven Computer System:Apple’s invention relates to graphical, event-driven computer systems, more particularly to custom interactive user-interaction elements in a computer system having a window-based graphical user interface.

And the list of products which are accused to infringe these patents are:

Upon information and belief, these products are manufactured, marketed and/or sold by Motorola in the United States. At least the following mobile devices infringe one or more claims of one or more of the Asserted Patents: Droid, Droid 2, Droid X, Cliq, Cliq XT, BackFlip, Devour A555, Devour i1, and Charm.1

We have no idea what Motorola will do in return but one thing’s clear here, Motorola isn’t the only company using multi touch related technology out there. It’s not a good idea to screw with Apple, ever! [via RedmondPie] [source PatentlyApple]