Who Sues Who in the Mobile Business?

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One of the headlines of this week is Apple’s lawsuit filed against HTC. It’s sad that it has come to this and, as I said earlier, this whole suing and counter-suing each other will hurt on the long rung us, the consumers.

Sure Apple has sued HTC, that’s not going to be the end of the world, is it? But check out the diagram above. It looks like everyone is trying or has tried to sue and counter-sue everyone else. Is there any unofficial contest between these companies? So far it looks like Nokia, Kodak and Apple are masters at this game as they have entered lawsuits with seven, five and five other companies, respectively.

So let’s look at the Apple vs HTC suit for a change. What will happen next? Who will win and what will eventually happen to you and me, the real people that use the technology at center of these lawsuits?

Well first of all Apple is trying to get a lot of money from HTC in damages for the alleged infringement. If their endeavor will be successful we might see HTC having to strip their handsets of the technology borrowed from Apple too and that’s besides paying in hard cold cash for their alleged mistake. And that whole stripping can be done OTA which might render some HTC handsets totally useless. That’s all just in theory as we don’t really believe that any judge will make HTC, or no other company for that matter, go through all that madness. Worst case scenario HTC will pay a premium price for using those technologies and we shall move on with our lives.

Should Apple lose, then basically nothing will really change although such an outcome might convince others (remember Psystar?) to use Apple’s technology without permission thinking they can get away with it. Although folks, I will have to clearly say here that HTC is allegedly infringing on some Apple patents. That doesn’t mean anything yet. Just like them Apple is allegedly infringing some Nokia patents but it’s only a judge really capable of telling us what’s what.

And by the time the jury, where applicable, reaches a verdict, we’ll have other suits, counter-suits and appeals ready to make everything go away.

In this process the companies will spend time and money focusing on that war when in fact they should be focusing more on us, their consumers and their mobile future. Sure the technology available today is really impressive but the mobile world is not stopping here. Even if, and that’s a very big big if, HTC were to lose this battle the war wages on. The company will surely come up with other ways of making their HTC smartphones compete against all the other smartphones. And so they should, no matter the outcome of this legal battle. The sky is not the limit here and everything can be done when it comes to mobile phones especially since these devices are expected to be more and more influential in the future.

Competition is definitely the force that drives innovation. But such trials could definitely have a destructive force that would negatively influence the whole mobile environment. Just check out the names above: Apple, HTC, Nokia, Samsung, RIM, LG, Sharp, Sony Ericsson, Motorola, Toshiba, Kodak, Qualcomm, Cisco, Elan, Hitachi… Imagine them playing nice together and making deals that would be mutually beneficial! Wouldn’t that make the mobile business a better place? Because, and that’s already proven, it doesn’t mean that if you’re using the same technologies available today at the same time, you’re going to make a phone as good as your rival. It’s more about, and I hate to use this phrase particularly given the circumstances, thinking out of the box, than about who has the more patents to play with and why.