For the first time in Apple history, Apple has agreed to license patents from Motorola. FOSS Patents has reported that Apple is looking to license essential wireless patents from Motorola Mobility. However, it looks as if Apple’s lawyers are looking to cheap out a bit when it comes to actually licensing them.
A passage from Apple’s legal filing states that Apple will not pay Motorola more than a dollar on each iPhone sold for its patent. Unfortunately for Apple, the court wants to set the price for their patents a bit higher. Apple has stated that they will appeal the ruling if the patent price is set at more than a dollar for each iPhone sold. We’ve embedded part of the passage below:
Motorola cannot offer evidence at this trial that the rate should be higher than $1 per phone, but to the extent the Court sets the rate higher than $1 per unit, Apple reserves the right to exhaust all appeals
As of now, Motorola is requesting 2.25 percent of the sale of each iPhone sold; however, Florian Mueller of FOSS Patents has said he doesn’t expect Motorola to get payout anywhere near that amount. I also think that 2.25 percent of each iPhone sold is a bit extravagant, but $1 seems a bit low for such a crucial technology.
Motorola Mobility was acquired by Google for $12.5 billion dollars in August of 2011. Google supposedly acquired Motorola to use its hardware resources for making its own phones and tablets in-house; however, Google has yet to use Motorola for any of the company’s Nexus phones or tablets.
Image Credit: gillyberlin
