HTC has started up a long-term licensing agreement with a patent firm to protect itself from lawsuits.

The contract with Intellectual Ventures gives HTC access to more than 30,000 patents in the company’s intellectual property portfolio. HTC says the deal will reduce its risk of litigation but did not specify what technologies were covered by the agreement.

“Given HTC’s innovativeness in developing some of the industry’s first smartphones and its continued development of some of the world’s most advanced products, HTC is forward-thinking with its IP practices and is working with [Intellectual Ventures] to mitigate its IP risk,” said Peter Detkin, founder of Intellectual Ventures, in a statement.

HTC has a good reason to want to avoid lawsuits. The company is already in patent spats with Apple, Gemalto and NTP over patents used in its handsets.