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As part of an ongoing legal dispute, Judge James Robart has ruled that Motorola will not be able to seek an injunction against certain Microsoft products based on the Google-owned company’s standards-based patents. The decision comes as a major blow to the strength of Moto’s patent portfolio, but all is not completely lost.
Judge Robart’s order doesn’t completely dismiss Motorola’s patents, and the company should still be able to collect licensing fees from Microsoft. How much that will amount to was the subject of a two-week bench trial in which Motorola and Google have sought up to $4 billion in fees per year.
The sticking point for Judge Robart was Motorola’s use of the H.264 standard as part of their patent. It is Robart’s belief that standards-based patents should come with certain limits, one being the use of RAND (Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory) pricing when seeking damages and fees. The RAND restrictions combined with Robart’s finding that Microsoft caused no irreparable harm inevitably means a smaller payday for Motorola.
But the ruling could stretch beyond the Seattle courtroom where a final decision on such a payday is being mulled. Given the limited number of cases dealing with standards-based patents and the growing number of infringement claims, judges around the world could look to Robart’s decision for guidance when ruling on similar matters. The outcome certainly does’t look favorable for Google and company.
[via ArsTechnica]
If they simply came to mutually balancing licensing agreement, I’d be happier than if Google totally won this case.
Good decision. Banning devices is not the way to go.
“The outcome certainly does’t look favorable for Google and company.”
What? It sounds to me like they won. Does “favorable” to you mean banning competitors devices? Google’s getting a payday off of this and the decision seems balanced in my opinion.
the payday will be on FRAND terms, and likely at pool rates, your reply shows you dont know much, but this is a huge blow to google who aquired moto for 12.5 billion and have yet to reap the benefits…while in places around the world like germany microsoft has 2 injunctions in place…and microsoft collects royalties from every major android oem except moto..and not pool rate royalties either.
It’s starting to become a sort of fad to sue android & any entity affiliated with them & win the case… Judges don’t seem to catch on to what’s going on because obviously they’re trying to make hardware manufacturer’s afraid to use android because they’ll be getting a lawsuit & soon it will start to work & there attacks on these. Motorola patents are making them worthless when in reality those Motorola patents are crucial to everything cellular & wireless data processing & more… There needs to be a new kind of jury & judge where the judge needs to know about patents & the effect there ruling makes & the jury is required to have some knowledge or know enough knowledge of the case at hand. The more I see these 80 y.o. Judges decide on things that they have no idea about is ridiculous, I would hate to go to court with another company & have a judge that doesn’t even know what a I.P. is…. Sad.