The United States antitrust regulators recently approved Google's purchase of Motorola Mobility Holdings, Inc.

Based in Mountain View, California, Google is now involved in patent litigation, and cited that its motive in purchasing the Motorola company was "reinforcing its defenses." The purchase of the company cost Google $12.5 billion and increased competition with Apple, Inc.

The purchase also expanded Google's mobile phone patents, giving the biggest maker of smartphone software more than 17,000 additional patents. Supposedly, the deal was the largest wireless equipment deal in the past 10 years. The United States Justice Department stated that Google's purchase of the company and its patents would not hurt mobile phone competition.

Pending patent litigation involves Apple, Inc. Apple sued companies over Google's Android system. Motorola Mobility's phones use the Android system, as do Samsung Electronics Co., and HTC Corp. The patents newly acquired by Google include technology such as location services, touch screen motions and antenna designs.

Microsoft and Apple also bought Nortel Network Corp., and acquired control of over 6,000 patents for wireless technology. This purchase was also approved by antitrust officials. The deal cost Microsoft and Apple $4.5 billion and gave Apple control of patents from Research in Motion, Ltd., Ericsson AB, Sony Corp., and EMC Corp.

The European Union also approved the Google deal, but the European Union's antitrust chief has concerns that phone makers may use patent litigation to block competition. The commission also stated that the probe it conducted showed that Google would most likely not block competitors' access to Motorola's standard-essential patent and the Android software. The EU's chief also stated that he did not rule out future antitrust probes of companies that use antitrust litigation to block competitors.

The European Union is also investigating allegations that Google discriminated against rival companies in its search results.

Source Title: Businessweek: "Google, Bard, PepsiCo, Time Warner: Intellectual Property," Feb. 14, 2012