In this era, it’s hard to be a start-up company or a company pushing for innovation, because you’ll probably be hindered by other companies too busy slapping patent lawsuits in your face.  So what can one do to continue the quest for innovation?  Like they say, ‘fight fire with fire’, not in the sense that you bitch-slap them with lawsuits but arm yourself with patents of your own–they can’t do harm if you already have immunity.  And this is exactly the strategy of most companies now.  They acquire smaller or medium sized companies that already have patents which can help them fend off patent lawsuits while also helping them innovate.

One great example of this is HTC, one of the fast-growing mobile companies, currently intertwined in the web of lawsuits regarding patent infringement for its Android devices.  They are currently battling Apple as they appeal the two infringement patents they were found guilty of, so to stop further infringement problems, they are now beefing up their own patent portfolios.  About a month ago, they bought S3 Graphics, which won a ruling against the maker of iPhones and iPads regarding two patents for compression technology, from VIA Semiconductors for $300 million.  This move was also expected to help HTC in their fight against Apple, though it may not yet be working in HTC’s favor.

According to the Wall Street Journal, “The U.S. International Trade Commission released details of a July 1 ruling that found in favor of S3 and declared that some Apple products did violate patents held by S3. But it found against S3’s claim that some of Apple’s high-profile mobile products, including the iPad and iPhone, violated its patents, a finding analysts say reduces S3’s use as a bargaining chip in HTC’s legal battle with Apple.”

So to make up for this slight bump on the road, HTC acquired Dashwire Inc., the maker of the Dashworks platform that provides mobile and web applications.  Dashwire acquired Intellectual Ventures which has over 20,000 patents.

“Cloud services are key to delivering the promise of connected services to our customers,” said Fred Liu, president of engineering and operations, HTC Corporation. “People want access to all of their important content wherever they are on any device. The addition of Dashwire’s cutting-edge sync services and deep mobile cloud experience strengthens our ability to deliver these services in a more powerful way.”

“Dashwire was founded with the conviction that mobile cloud services would fundamentally change how people create, connect with and share their content across their devices,” said Ford Davidson, founder and CEO of Dashwire. “HTC shares the mobile cloud computing vision with Dashwire which makes it exciting for us to be joining the HTC family to drive even more innovation in this space.”

HTC is not the only company making acquisitions to strengthen their walls against patent infringement lawsuits.  Rockstar Bidco, the alliance of different companies, bought over 6,000 Nortel patents, which led to Google into thinking that everyone’s out to bring Android down.   That led to an angry blog post where Google blasted its enemies for their backhanded tactics.  Google also acquired Fridge social network, PittPatt the facial recognition software, and most recently they acquired Dealmap, a daily deals aggregation site.

These are just examples of some of the acquisitions that could have a major impact on today’s ongoing patent lawsuits.  These acquisitions are made to strengthen the core of the company.  We’ll see how well this strategy works, as it could re-shape the future of the mobile industry.