The nation's largest patent licensing company, Intellectual Ventures (IV), was founded as a kind of patent defense fund, but IV ultimately turned to the classic "patent troll" model of suing tech companies for infringement, back in 2010. Several have settled with IV, but a few have refused, pushing IV's claims to be an "invention marketplace" into court.

The first company to take an IV case to a jury trial was Google-owned Motorola. The case was filed in 2011, and a jury trial began on January 23 over three patents related to smartphone technologies, including some claims alleged to cover aspects of the Google Play marketplace.

Now, the Wilmington, Delaware-based trial has ended in a mistrial, with jurors unable to reach a unanimous conclusion about which side should win the case. Deliberations began Tuesday, and Reuters was first to report the mistrial on Wednesday evening.

"Mistrials are an occasional fact of life, and it is disappointing (for us, and probably also for Motorola) that the jury could not reach a unanimous verdict," said Melissa Finocchio, chief litigation counsel for Intellectual Ventures, in a statement published Wednesday. "But we are looking ahead to the retrial on these patents and also to our two other upcoming trials with Motorola Mobility Inc. later this year."

"We continue to believe this lawsuit was based on overbroad patent claims meant to tax innovation," a Motorola Mobility spokesman told CNET.

Google has announced that it will be selling Motorola to Lenovo in the near future, but that transaction still has to go through regulators' approval. For now, Moto's legal disputes are still Google's legal disputes. Google is keeping most of Motorola's patent portfolio, however.