Hold on, is Apple also not getting their pound of flesh from HTC as well? Is it open season on HTC?

pretty much, yes. Both of them seem like an indirect attack on android through HTC. Alot of the patent complaints where not specific to HTC but general to android.

why HTC? is it because of its origin or do they just not have good lawyers?

Interesting article about the current state of things. Nokia specifically mentioned.

http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/mow...uch-a-Mess.htm

Probably because some of the best Android devices are associated with HTC.

It makes me wonder if all patents in the mobile realm were to be invalidated what would happen...

If they took out software patents, you'd probably see an explosion in work on some rather interesting fields that have been halted completely.

Wavelets, for instance, would no longer be a minefield. And there would be considerably less hesitation towards accepting the Mono project into various and sundry Gnome things.

HTC is being targeted by the two "Luigis" for "protection money" because their patent portfolio is too lightweight to even consider sueing back...

It's all a very sad testament to american corporate mentality and why we're all increasingly under the "protection" of a handful of overgrown and omnipresent oligarchs which can bully and milk smaller competitors and the masses (aka us, the consumers) in the most imaginative ways.

Here's MS protecting and collecting their gawd-and-govt-given "tax revenue" on software developed by others (based on Open Source and Google's work) running on hardware designed and built by others (HTC representing a whole class of current and future victims here).

What's next? Will the hapless consumers need to start begging for MS-and-Apple-tax-free nonpreloaded devices and handsets (like the current PC scene...) before personally installing some free OS system (perhaps Maem... Meego?) as a desperate attempt to avoid that said irrational tax?

Meanwhile Google's remaining mum, but since they're the ones licensing Android (under Apache 2.0 license) I'd really expect them to step in front and soon. It is simply ludicrous that the system allows all these licensees (of every size) to be sued at random while the actual licenser isn't...

It's an interesting thing since there have been numerous studies that advocate for more or for less patents. Ones that are both sponsored by "interested" parties and ones that aren't sponsored by "interested" parties on both sides.

http://www.ehomeupgrade.com/2010/04/...based-gadgets/

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/...k-android.html

HTC should just tell microsoft

SHOW ME THE CODE.