Motorola is being sued in a patent row by a company partly bankrolled by Google - which wants to buy the company - as well as Microsoft's former chief technology officer Nathan Myhrvold. Intellectual Ventures (IV), a company who has a pool of about 35,000 patents, today filed a patent infringement complaint against Motorola Mobility in the U.S. District Court of Delaware.

The company has accused Motorola Mobility of using its technology to perform file transfers, updates and remote data management and other functions on some of its smartphones.

In a statement, Intellectual Ventures said it had been in discussion with Motorola since January 2011 but the talks had failed to produce an agreement.

"Intellectual Ventures has successfully signed licensing agreements with many of the top handset manufacturers in the world, and has been in discussions with Motorola Mobility for some time," said IV's Chief Litigation Counsel Melissa Finocchio. "Unfortunately, we have been unable to reach agreement on a license," she added. "We have a responsibility to our current customers and our investors to defend our intellectual property rights against companies such as Motorola Mobility who use them without a license. Our goal continues to be to provide companies with access to our portfolio through licensing and sales, but we will not tolerate ongoing infringement of our patents to the detriment of our current customers and our business."

Intellectual Ventures was set up by Microsoft's former chief technology officer Nathan Myhrvold.

In mid-August Google put down a $12.5bn bid to acquire Motorla Mobility and of course, its patents.

Ironically, a licensing deal negotiated in late 2010 revealed that Google was one of the firms that put cash into Intellectual Ventures' investment funds.