Google chairman Eric Schmidt is currently on a tour of Asia, where he announced the company’s $199 Nexus 7 tablet in Tokyo on Monday. During his announcement, Schmidt found some time to talk about Apple and its patent wars against other companies. Schmidt revealed that while Apple is a “very good partner,” he doesn’t agree with patent wars, and feels they “prevent choice” and innovation.

Schmidt also revealed that he doesn’t feel some of Apple’s patents should stand. “There are plenty of prior arts,” Schmidt said, “and I don’t want to go beyond that.” Schmidt added that there are over 200,000 “overlapping and complicated” patents in the mobile phone world, and they should not be used to stop the sale of another vendor’s devices:

“Literally patent wars prevent choice, prevent innovation and I think that is very bad. We are obviously working through that and trying to make sure we stay on the right side of these issues. So ultimately Google stands for innovation as opposed to patent wars.”

[…] “I think one of the worst things that happened in the last few years has been the belief that somehow there are so many patents in the mobile phone world, an estimated 200,000 patent that are overlapping and complicated and so forth, that one vendor can stop the sale of another vendor’s phones or devices,” he added.

After its massive victory over Samsung earlier this year, which saw the Korean company fined more than $1 billion, Apple could be successful in its pursuit to have a number of Galaxy smartphones and tablets banned in the United States. It has already seen preliminary injunctions granted against the Galaxy Tab in Europe, forcing Samsung to modify the slate’s design and release a different model in Germany.

• Via9to5Mac