Sorry, Motorola, the court doesn’t want to hear any more of your complaints about standard-essential patent violations, and in particular they don’t want to hear any more of your complaints about Apple. The Karlsruhe Higher Regional Court in Germany has decided to bar Motorola (MMI) from abusing FRAND legislations, and as a result Motorola’s attempts at having Apple’s iPhone and iPad production halted are on hold.
While today’s decision is only a summary and preliminary decision that MMI could overturn during the course of the full-blown appellate proceedings, this indicates thatApple’s appeal is highly likely to succeed — and even if it didn’t, Apple could realistically resolve the problem with limited additional concessions.
Apple has continuously attempted to appease judges by iterating on a proposal to MMI that would clear up the patent licensing problems, but until today it sounded like Motorola couldn’t come to terms with anything Apple was offering. Today’s ruling solves the problem for Motorola.
Long story short, Florian Mueller of FOSS Patents believes that Google’s 12.5 billion dollar legal strategy (Google purchased Motorola Mobility) has failed before it even had a chance to get started, stating “this is so huge that it even begs the question of whether Google’s strategy for its $12.5 billion purchase of Motorola Mobility has failed before the deal is even formally closed (they’re still waiting for some regulatory approvals).” It looks like there’s 12.5 billion reasons why the purchase was a mistake for Google.
Both Apple and Microsoft have filed complaints with the EU about Motorola’s practices with FRAND licensing. Under international law, companies are required to license standard based patents for fair price. Apple and Microsoft are claiming that Motorla is playing fast and loose with the rules.
Image Credit: HLVisions
