In a complaint filed Monday in San Jose, Google claims that Rockstars patent campaign is taking aim at hundreds of California tech companies and that the litigation has placed a cloud on Googles Android platform, threatening Nexus devices in particular.

The lawsuit amounts to an effort to shield ASUS and other companies that use the open source Android operating system from a legal extermination effort by Rockstar, which filed a wave of lawsuits in late October:

Despite its cocky name, Rockstar is simply a corporate patent troll hatched by Google rivals including Apple, Microsoft and BlackBerry after the rivals spent $4.5 billion ($2.5 billion from Apple) in 2012 for a trove of patents from Nortel, a long defunct Canadian telco company. Today, Rockstar employsonce-proud Canadian engineers to help with the trolling operation.The filing says:

Rockstar produces no products and practices no patents. Instead, Rockstar employsa staff of engineers in Ontario, Canada, who examine other companies successful products to findanything that Rockstar might use to demand and extract licenses to its patents under threat of litigation.

The complaint also states that Rockstars trolling campaign has targeted more than 100 companies, and that Rockstars CEO has said that Facebook, LinkedIn and every other tech company is infringing the old Nortel patents.

Such claims may seem absurd, and could speed calls to reform a dysfunctional patent system, but they also present a very real business problem for Android makers since the lawsuits mean an ongoing risk of injunctions and unpredictable jury verdicts.

Google appears to be especially concerned about the Nexus line of phones. It asks the court to declare that theNexus 5,Nexus 7, or Nexus 10 devices sold by Google directly or indirectly dont infringe seven patents that belong to Rockstar or to MobileStar, another shell company thatwas formed for litigation one day before Rockstar filed its lawsuits against Googles customers.

As for the patents, they relate to basic functions like mobile hotspot functionality, VPN management functionality and Messaging and Notification.

Its unclear, however, how far Google will get with its attempt to get a declaration that the patents dont infringe.

In April, Americas patent appeals court ruled Cisco couldnt sue to protect its customers from patent infringements suits targeting customers that used its routers. This could create procedural obstacles in Googles attempt to put brakes on the sprawling Android litigation.

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Google sues to protect Android device makers from Apple-backed patent hell