<< Apple is suing phone maker HTC, alleging that the Taiwanese company is infringing 20 Apple patents related to the user interface, underlying architecture, and hardware of the iPhone. >>

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-10462116-94.html

Here's the press release:

<< CUPERTINO, Calif. March 2 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — Apple® today filed a lawsuit against HTC for infringing on 20 Apple patents related to the iPhone’s user interface, underlying architecture and hardware. The lawsuit was filed concurrently with the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) and in U.S. District Court in Delaware.
“We can sit by and watch competitors steal our patented inventions, or we can do something about it. We’ve decided to do something about it,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “We think competition is healthy, but competitors should create their own original technology, not steal ours.”
Apple reinvented the mobile phone in 2007 with its revolutionary iPhone®, and did it again in 2008 with its pioneering App Store, which now offers more than 150,000 mobile applications in over 90 countries. Over 40 million iPhones have been sold worldwide. >>

http://www.askgsm.com/acer/apple-sues-htc-for-patent-infringment/

They'd be stupid not to sue, and Apple is anything but stupid. The OSX Cocoa Touch multitouch UI-patterns –like the one-finger "flick" to scroll content– which I assume are among subjects of this suit, represent Apple's considerable investment AND unique selling points in the market. They'd be acting against their own interests by not defending that intellectual equity.

There is also an ironic component to this legal wrangling: when iPhone debuted in March of 2007, the collective "industry response" prior to, and for a considerable time after the launch, was that Apple can not win this battle – all those heavy hitters with millions of sold units were lined against them. iPhone's "oversized form" was among its most denigrated factors, and projected future causes of the product's demise.

Fast forward 3 years, and Apple's iPhone and its phoneless "sibling" Touch rule both the wireless browsing traffic AND (what's more important) the profits of the cellphone industry. Nokia et al may continue to sell far more units than Apple ever will, but, when you're dealing in commodities, and in low economy markets (like Africa, where Nokia is dominanant; parts of Asia where Samsung & HTC are), your actual profits are nothing to be proud of. And so the very same companies that found so much fault with the basic iPhone's form- and other factors, now scramble to the market with iPhone-lookalike, and -actalike models (they think). Mobile gizmos that at best mimic surface behavior of iPhone's UI, but never approach its high level of hardware/ firmware and software integration. Why? Because apparently they can never get its act together —if they could, and innovated instead of resting on their once market-segment laurels, they'd be the ones now en vogue, while the iPhone, perhaps, a struggling also-ran.

PS. don't give me the bullshit about future potential of Android phones. I'll believe it when I see one that offers some plain-Jane end-user advantage over the iPhone; one, THAT IS NOT PRIMARILY IDEOLOGICAL ("FOSS") in scope.

I am not a lawyer (even though I've seen plenty of such being played on TV), so I can not vouch for the correctness of Engadget's analysis of Apple's legal case, but here it is for y'all to ponder: "Apple suing HTC over 20-odd patents" (oldest from 1995, earliest awarded mere month ago!)
http://i.engadget.com/2010/03/02/apple-vs-htc-a-patent-breakdown/

(a hint: "Apple is going after Android as much as it is going after HTC")

Here's an enlightening graphic overview of what The New York Times' blogger Nick Bilton calls "An Explosion of Mobile Patent Lawsuits" [March 4, 2010, 7:47 am]
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2010/03/03/technology/bits-suepatent2/bits-suepatent2-blogSpan.jpg
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/04/an-explosion-of-mobile-patent-lawsuits/
"At first glance, it looks as if we’re in the middle of a patent lawsuit Super Bowl party. Nearly every large mobile phone player — with the exception of Microsoft, Palm and, so far, Google — has recently been involved in some sort of patent litigation regarding mobile technologies. [...]"

I'm surprised Nick Bilton didn't include Microsoft, whose patent on the VFAT filesystem affects just about every mobile device. I expect Amazon (Kindle) and Google (Nexus One) are already paying royalties to Microsoft, or have a patent swap deal in force.