Google has decided to open the counteroffensive against the Rockstar consortium, which in October 2013 sued Google and its partners Asus, HTC, Huawei, LG, Pantech, Samsung and ZTE for alleged violation by Android of some patents owned by the consortium. According to Google, Rockstar’s lawsuit has placed a cloud on Google’s Android platform; threatened Google’s business and relationships with its customers and partners, as well as its sales of Nexus-branded Android devices.

The patents owned by the Rockstar consortium were bought in 2011, when Nortel went bankrupt. The consortium, which includes Apple, Microsoft, BlackBerry, Ericsson and Sony, made the highest bid acquiring the patents for $4.5 billion. From the beginning, everyone thought that the consortium members would use those patents as weapons in the war that in recent years is involving the big companies in the world of mobile devices, and so it’s been.

Now Google has gone to counterattack, accusing the Rockstar consortium of patent trolling. The company described the consortium as an organization that produces no products and practices no patents. Instead, Rockstar employs a staff of engineers who examine other companies’ successful products to find anything that Rockstar might use to demand and extract licenses to its patents under threat of litigation.

The lawsuit filed by the Rockstar consortium is in Texas, now Google has asked a California court to declare that the company doesn’t infringe directly or indirectly any Rockstar patent. According to Google, the California court has jurisdiction because, among other things, companies based in the state such as Apple are part of it and their lawsuits are also targeted to other California-based companies.

As always in these cases, the issue is complex and who knows when it will end and with what result. In recent days, it was announced that the Rockstar consortium is in talks to sell part of its patents. Tha confirms that the members of the consortium are interested in making money from selling those patents only at great cost or licensing them, perhaps with threats of lawsuits like the one filed against Google.

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