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The legal saga of Apple versus Android rumbles on, with Motorola Mobility taking further shots at its tormentor on the eve of its presumed takeover by Google, while Apple itself is trying to make it harder for HTC to work around a recent ITC ruling which could ban the Taiwanese vendor's devices from the US.

Motorola has filed its latest lawsuit in the US District Court for the Southern District of Florida and the hand of Google can be seen, even though the IPR-driven acquisition has not yet been approved by the European Commission (a green light which is widely expected in mid-February). The suit, as spotted by patents expert Florian Mueller of FOSS Patents, claims that Apple is infringing on six Motorola patents in the iPhone 4S and - a new addition to the hitlist - iCloud.

This is Motorola Mobility's second action against Apple in this court and citing these particular patents, but the judge had refused to allow the company to add the new products to its existing suit. Motorola is calling for damages and an injunction. "Apple's infringing activities have caused and will continue to cause Motorola Mobility irreparable harm, for which it has no adequate remedy at law, unless Apple's infringing activities are enjoined by this Court," the company said in its filing.

The patents, mainly awarded between 1998 and 2002, cover areas such as a "receiver having concealed external antenna"; "multiple pager status synchronization system and method"; "method and apparatus for communicating summarized data"; "system for communicating user-selected criteria filter prepared at wireless client to communication server for filtering data"; "apparatus for controlling utilization of software added to a portable communication device"; and "method and apparatus in a wireless messaging system for facilitating an exchange of address information".

Meanwhile, Apple has filed an appeal at the US ITC (International Trade Commission),which seeks to broaden the scope of a recent ruling against HTC. Although that December judgement could lead to an injunction against some HTC products, the Taiwanese firm had said it could achieve a workaround before the ban was due to take effect this spring. Apple may be looking to make it harder for its rival to get round the injunction, by citing another patent - also used against Motorola - which Mueller believes would be far harder to work around. This is US patent No. 6,343,262, which details "a real time signal processing system for serially transmitted data". The ITC initially denied that patent's inclusion in its import ban, but Apple seems to be trying to reverse that decision now, although a ruling is unlikely to be imminent.

The judgements in Apple's legal battles with various Android majors continue to pile up, with no clear victory for any party. No sooner does Apple win a round, than it loses another in a different court or case, leading to an overall stalemate. Last week, it lost another bid to have the Galaxy Tab 10.1 banned in the Netherlands, when a Dutch appeals court refused to overturn an earlier ruling that the Samsung tablet did not copy the iPad in its design.

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