Apple's latest legal victory over Motorola in Germany declared 'huge'
Apple's latest courtroom win over Motorola Mobility in a German patent infringement suit is so significant, it has led one expert to now question whether Google's $12.5 billion purchase of Motorola was worth it.
The Karlsruhe Higher Regional Court ruled on Monday that Motorola Mobility cannot further enforce its standard-essential patent injunction against Apple in Germany during its appeal. That indicates that Apple is "highly likely" to succeed, which was declared a "huge" win for the iPhone maker by intellectual property expert Florian Mueller of FOSS Patents.
"The appeals court summarily held that Apple has made an amended proposal for taking a license to MMI's patents on FRAND terms that should be acceptable to MMI, turning any further attempts to ban Apple's iPhone and iPad products into a violation of applicable antitrust law," Mueller wrote.
In fact, Apple's win on Monday was considered so significant by Mueller that he said it raises the question of whether Google's purchase of Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion last August has "failed before the deal is even formally closed." Experts have largely viewed Google's acquisition of Motorola as a deal driven by patent acquisitions to bolster its strength in a lawsuit-laden smartphone industry.
The decision comes less than a week after Microsoft joined the fray and filed an antitrust suit against Motorola Mobility in the European Union, accusing it of abusing its standard-essential patents. Both Microsoft and Apple believe Motorola has been illegally attempting to block sales of their products by leveraging patents that are obligated to be offered with fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) licensing.
Motorola has sought in court to obtain 2.25 percent of Apple's sales of wireless devices, including the iPhone, in exchange for a patent license. Apple has argued that Motorola's royalty sought for a standard-essential patent is unfair, unreasonable and discriminatory.
While Monday's decision is a major win for Apple on the FRAND patent front, it is in no way related to the injunction Motorola obtained against Apple in Germany earlier this month related to push services. That has forced Apple to disable some of the functionality of its iCloud service in Germany.
[ View article on AppleInsider ]
Comments
I'm definitely intrigued by what may come of the push services contention.
I'd be really pissed to not have iCloud. I find it indispensable.
Couldn't agree more!
Will be interesting to see their next move.
You know their next move - same as all the past moves. Lots of FUD, more lawsuits all over the world, and continued portrayal of the "We're open, so we must be better" meme. Maybe even start a petition......
I'd be really pissed to not have iCloud. I find it indispensable.
You do know that iCloud isn't completely shut down in Germany right? As far as I've read it's just the push email. Your iStream photos and app purchases will still sync across devices. I might be wrong but I think calendar and contacts will also still sync.
Will be interesting to see their next move.
they should just take the license payments and be happy. concentrate on making motorola phones the 'standard' android phone and get rid of that added motowiz or pisswiz or whatever crap is in addition to Android.
You do know that iCloud isn't completely shut down in Germany right? As far as I've read it's just the push email. Your iStream photos and app purchases will still sync across devices. I might be wrong but I think calendar and contacts will also still sync.
So would that only be relevant if you use iCloud/MobileMe email? Not a web mail or exchange service? As in not many people
I'd be really pissed to not have iCloud. I find it indispensable.
Uh....
They still have iCloud, they just have to change the settings on mail to fetch instead of push, and this only effects mail and only on mobile devices.
iCloud email is still on. The only thing that was shut down was push notification. That means your iPhones are not "always" connected to the mail servers and notify you instantly. But you can have the same functionality by using Fetch method. Rather than the mail server pushing the email notification to you, your handset will periodically check the email server to see if there is any new email. You can set the interval when the handset will retrieve emails - it can be 5 mins, 15 mins, 30 mins etc.
To me checking emails in every 15 mins is a much better option as it will not drain your handset battery.
I still hope Oracle can recoup and hit back with further patents, and really stick it into Google. What Google has done with Java is so blatant, it will be extremely unfair if they can walk away from this scot-free.
It will be interesting to see what Apple agreed to, to reach this stage with Motorola. I sure hope that they did not agree to the 2.25% asked for. But seriously brings to question what Google would do now.
You do know that iCloud isn't completely shut down in Germany right? As far as I've read it's just the push email. Your iStream photos and app purchases will still sync across devices. I might be wrong but I think calendar and contacts will also still sync.
Ah that's great.
Uh....
They still have iCloud, they just have to change the settings on mail to fetch instead of push, and this only effects mail and only on mobile devices.
Stupid court case. Feck Moto.
http://www.reghardware.com/2012/02/2...id_collection/
I love how the Android copyists can't even come up with an original name:
http://www.reghardware.com/2012/02/2...id_collection/
They're dead. ViewSonic is dead. That's all there is to this.
It's the same as if someone tried to sell Corka-Corla.
How pathetic is that?
These Android losers have no shame at all, not to mention zero originality and zero talent.
I threw a perfectly good, working Viewsonic CRT monitor in the trash about a month ago.
Screw Viewsonic. These Android losers don't even try to make an effort.
As for Motorola and Google, well fuck them too!
Maybe the standards bodies should require the IP holders to specify the terms they will offer to everyone if their technology is included in the standard. Seems like a lot of companies are trying to take advantage of the current system.
Not necessarily a lot of companies - apparently just Motorola and Samsung. That's a good idea, though, for the standards bodies to spell out general terms for the licenses. I also hope the standards people would reject technology from Samsung and Motorola in the future, after seeing the abusive behaviour of those companies.