Although apple and microsoft are suing the hardware manufacturers, it's really the software that they are after however they CAN'T sue google directly. I'm not clear on how this works, but because Android is open sourced and is freely distributed and not really used (by them), they are not liable at all to lawsuits regarding the OS. The OEMs instead have to take that liability. Microsoft hopes to 'bully' them into considering windows phone as the other option rather than pay patent licensing using 'free' Android