This Friday, Google’s Motorola Mobility filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Apple Inc. The details of the lawsuit remain hidden until Monday when the actual filing appears on the International Trade Commission’s website. However some details have come up including that Motorola is seeking a ban on import of Apple products into the US as it infringes on seven of Motorola’s patents. There’s more after the break.
When Google acquired Motorola Mobility, it also got 17000 patents which is a huge number for a relatively young company such as Google. Therefore, it was expected the purchase of Motorola was more to do with boosting Google’s patent portfolio to defend Android OS and its other mobile ventures than Motorola’s hardware. This has been evident since none of the Nexus devices have come from Motorola. Apple’s unwillingness in working towards a resolution of licenses with Motorola is what resulted in this patent lawsuit which is evident from this official statement.
We would like to settle these patent matters, but Apple’s unwillingness to work out a license leaves us little choice but to defend ourselves and our engineers’ innovations.
The patents that Apple is accused of infringing apply to location reminders, email notifications, video and Siri. These are pretty broad terms but we’ll know the extent of the case come Monday when the filing is made public.
