Gruber has a good writeup posted now, initially tearing apart Dan Lyons's take on the situation, then pointing towards a story I missed. Motorola was planning to sue other Android phone makers. Being that this came up after the five week period when Motorola Mobility was in talks to be acquired, it may have been an empty threat to raise the buyout price, but still a very dangerous one. Civil war between Android vendors would have been a very bad situation, leaving Google with little choice here.

The next few years will be interesting to see how this all unfolds in the smartphone/tablet space. No one side in this fight is clean, and some of these moves are starting to get to company destroying levels.