The Smartphone Patent War, In 1 Graphic

That graphic only clearly states one thing, the smartphone patent situation is a mess. It does so by being a mess.

If it has to be a graphic, an informative arrangement would be all companies listed down the left side, and all companies listed again across the top, then draw the exact same set of colored arrows. You can see the same idea on the back of a gas station map, that lists distances between cities.

If space is an issue, tabular text would be great.

The graphic is unfortunately not very clear, for example because the arrows can split midway. This way it looks like Microsoft is suing just one company without being countersued, while in reality they're suing three companies.