Here’s the most up-to-date punch in the ongoing mobile-device patent brawl: Apple has filed an official complaint with the European Commission against Motorola Mobility for violatingagreements to fairly license standards-important patents. The action comes just days soon after the U.S. and E.U. approved Google’s acquire of Motorola Mobility for $ 12.5 billion.
Motorola revealed the complaint Friday in its annual report with the SEC, which reads:
“On February 17, 2012, the Company received a letter from the European Commission, Competition Directorate-Common, (the “Commission”) notifying it that the Commission has received a complaint against Motorola Mobility, Inc. (“MMI”) by Apple, Inc. (“Apple”) regarding the enforcement of MMI’s standards-crucial patents against Apple allegedly in breach of MMI’s FRAND commitments. Apple’s complaint seeks the Commission’s intervention with respect to standards-crucial patents. Apple’s complaint seeks the Commission’s intervention with respect to standards-essential patents.”
The Motorola patents in question are included in the 17,000 patents Google will get its hands on when its acquire of Motorola Mobility is complete. The patents are to be licensed on fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms. When a technologies is classified as FRAND, the owner of the patent must license it to other companies for a fee, since the technologies is considered essential to an sector.
Two days ago, Apple won a dispute with Motorola in German courts more than its “Slide to unlock” feature. The courts mentioned two Motorola phones had been violating Apple’s patent and now Apple can push to have the devices removed from the market.
In a current letter to the iEEE standards association, Google mentioned it would continue to license all standards-essential patents below the exact same circumstances as Motorola Mobility, and for the exact same maximum two.25 percent royalty of the net selling cost — that’s the full price tag of a tablet or smartphone just before any subsidies.
If patent war play-by-plays are your factor, follow Florian Mueller’s exhaustively thorough FOSS Patents weblog.
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