Mailing the story:

In a decisive twist to the sprawling smartphone wars, it appears the government intends to sue some of the participants over their use of patents. The first targets won't be the companies that initiated the battles, though—companies like Apple, Kodak, and Microsoft that have gone on the offensive. Instead, it looks like Google and possibly Samsung could be the targets of government lawsuits. Staffers at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) have formally recommended the government bring an antitrust lawsuit against Google, according to sources cited by Bloomberg. Now FTC commissioners will have to decide whether to whether to act on that recommendation. A decision will likely come after the presidential election on November 6.

The problem is Google's use of so-called standards-essential patents. Those are patents it has already disclosed to a standards-setting body as being important to the functioning of some type of technology standard.