I posted a bit ago about Motorola’s upcoming move to bring Multitouch to their Android-powered devices, seemingly in the face of Google’s desires.  The accepted rationale for this move has been that Apple supposedly holds a number of multitouch interface patents that preclude other manufacturers from implementing these features.

This is a good time to dig up the old archives and read this old post from Engadget from last year this time that analyzes the specific patents in question.  The upshot of the analysis seems to be that Palm feels that it has the necessary patent portfolio to defend itself from any Apple patent lawsuit including a number of patents which Apple may be violating against Palm.

Perhaps this is the same reason why Motorola, as an older technology company with a significant patent arsenal in the areas of mobile gadgets, might feel that it is in a better position to risk and Apple lawsuit than Google (which does not have a huge history in the gadget space) or HTC, which is a much younger company (though they have been around since 1997 which is an eternity in the tech world).

Its certainly not a satisfactory explanation, but a workable theory at least.

via Engadget

[Image via PC-Tablet.fr]