Apple sues HTC over iPhone patents

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - APPLE (AAPL.NQ)Inc accused HTC Corp, which makes touchscreen smartphones using Google Inc's software, of infringing 20 hardware and software patents related to the iPhone, in a lawsuit filed on Tuesday.

The suit, filed at the same time with the International Trade Commission and the District Court in Delaware, was viewed by some analysts as proxy for an attack on Google.

"I think this is kind of an indirect lawsuit against Google," said Kaufman Bros analyst Shaw Wu.

He said the timing of the suit is curious given that Google just launched the Nexus One smartphone, which is manufactured by HTC.

Apple's suit did not name Google as a defendant. Some of the patents cited dated back to the mid 1990s.

"We think competition is healthy, but competitors should create their own original technology, not steal ours," Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs said in a news release.

The move is the latest scrape over ownership of the underlying technology for smartphones -- handsets that play video and music, take pictures and send e-mail -- which are increasing in popularity.

Eastman Kodak Co in January filed a complaint with the ITC, saying Apple's iPhone and Research in Motion Ltd's BlackBerry camera phones infringe the photography company's patents.

Nokia, the world's top mobile phone maker, also sued Apple in January over patents. The dispute, potentially involving hundreds of millions of dollars in annual royalties, reflects the shifting balance of power in the mobile industry as cellphones morph into handheld computers that can play video games and surf the Web.

(Additional reporting by Sinead Carew and Franklin Paul; Editing by Derek Caney and Tiffany Wu)