Google provides HTC ammo in Apple patent fight

HTC Corp. has used patents obtained from Google Inc. to sue Apple Inc. for infringement, a move that escalates an intellectual property arms race centered on Google's Android mobile software.

In 2011, Apple and Google spent more on patent litigation and intellectual property than on research and development. That’s not a good sign for the United States economy. Rampant patent litigation is impeding innovation and ultimately increasing the costs of gadgets for cumsumers, according to legal experts and industry observers. Now, President Obama says he wants to fix the system. This week, Obama introduced a proposal to crack down on so-called patent trolls — firms whose main objective is to extract licensing fees from other companies.

Google's Android team held a fireside chat this afternoon at the company's big I/O developers conference where it took questions from developers about working with the mobile operating system. 

One of the inevitable results of cost shifting (see the video below) is not just the compression of margins, but the rapid advancement of adoption by the masses. This rapid adoption causes users producers, and in the tech space - programmers and hardware OEMs to dump significant amounts of resources into the product in the race for revenue and proftis. The end result?

Bloomberg reports Google’s Android Infringed Oracle’s Java, Jury Says:

Larry Dignan (ZDNet) submits: Apple’s (AAPL) high-profile patent lawsuit vs.

The latest phone to come out running Google's mobile operating system, Android, is the HTC Desire 200. We first read about it on Android Beat. The HTC Desire 200 low-end phone that costs $165. Here's what's weird about it. It comes with ad-blocking software pre-installed.

Google announced today that it will sell a version of HTC's flagship One smartphone running a clean version of Android starting June 26 for $599.