Everyone is going nuts because we just sued HTC for violating several hundred of our patents, including our patent for the 12-box keypad (1-9 plus * and #) which we introduced on the iPhone and are now seeing copied everywhere, and our patent on the “audible tone to indicate an incoming call on a telephonic communication device,” which also is just showing up everywhere.

Naturally there’s a risk when you start suing people that people will view you as a kind of bully, but we’re trying to make clear that we are just attempting to defend our rights and protect the innovation and invention that we’ve spent years innovating on inside our incredibly innovative invention labs. Gizmodo says the patents we’ve got are “incredible!” and that HTC had no idea we were going to sue them. AllThingsD provides complete copies of court documents which I recommend you go read, from front to back, right away. TechCrunch says that the suit is actually an attack on Google and Android, which is true. It’s war, people.

Meanwhile someone really seems to have it in for Dr. Eric Schmidt these days and is dishing up loads of embarrassing crap about him, like this photo in which he looks, well, sort of not really human. And then someone else dug up an obscure Web post where a former employee calls Schmidt a “smug little prick.” You’d almost think that, I don’t know, some spurned ex-lover decided to get a little revenge or something.