Motorola Wins Patent Victory Against Apple

The battles between Apple and Samsung in Germany and elsewhere have grabbed most of the headlines, but the iPhone maker is also engaged in legal war with Motorola Mobility, a spat made more interesting by the impending takeover by Google. In an intriguing twist, a regional German court in Mannheim has granted Motorola a preliminary injunction against Apple, pointing to the kind of value in the former's patent portfolio, which attracted Google to it in the first place.

Focal Points:

• Unlike a couple of preliminary injunctions Apple has won against Samsung, this ruling does not bar the iPhone maker from selling products in Germany, since the lawsuit was filed against Apple Inc corporation, not the local German subsidiary. Nor does the ruling name any specific products - but it does find that Apple infringed on two Motorola patents.
• "We will continue to assert ourselves in the protection of these assets, while also ensuring that our technologies are widely available to end users," a Motorola spokesperson told CNet. But its antagonist reacted with the PR equivalent of a shrug, saying in a statement: "This is a procedural issue and has nothing to do with the merits of the case. It does not affect our ability to do business or sell products in Germany at this time."
• The two patents involved are both European but have US equivalents filed during the 1990s, and both relate to fundamental aspects of mobile data and messaging - one covers a "method for performing a countdown function during a mobile originated transfer for a packet radio system" and the other a "multiple pager status synchronization system and method".
• Motorola - as one of the 'MEN' (Motorola, Ericsson, Nokia) companies which laid the foundations of the mobile industry - has vast stores of IPR covering fundamental workings of cellular networks. This is an area where, as setbacks against Nokia have shown, Apple is weaker by virtue of its later entry into the mobile market, with most of its own patent claims relating to newer trends such as touchscreens, multimedia functionality or its famous user experience.
• According to patent expert Florian Mueller of FOSS Patents, Apple may have allowed for the default award of an injunction - since it will not stop sales immediately - in order to present all its arguments in an appeal. He told CNet the tactic is commonly used under German law as a way to avoid missing a filing deadline.
• However, he added: "This is a very strange episode in the ongoing mobile patent wars, and without a doubt, this does potentially strengthen Motorola Mobility vis-à-vis Apple."
• Meanwhile, the European Commission has requested information on patents from Apple and Samsung, as it becomes increasingly concerned about how valuable IPR might be used in an anti-competitive way. "The Commission has sent requests for information to Apple and Samsung concerning the enforcement of standards-essential patents in the mobile telephony sector," said a statement. "Such requests for information are standard procedure in antitrust investigations to allow the Commission to establish the relevant facts in a case."
• Standards-essential patents must, unlike regular patents, be licensed on a fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory (Frand) basis under EU law, a principle which is also being tested in one of the Apple-Samsung battles in Australia. The Frand rules mean that, even if a firm infringes an essential patent, it cannot suffer an injunction or excessively high royalties.
• The EU did not specify whether its probe related to one or both of the vendors' claims, but Apple said in a court filing that Samsung was the focus. "Samsung's litigation campaign and other conduct related to its Declared-Essential Patents is so egregious that the European Commission recently has opened an investigation to determine whether Samsung's behavior violates EU competition laws," the iPhone maker stated in a filing on October 28 in a court in California. Samsung just said it was cooperating fully.

If the EC finds grounds for investigation, it could open formal proceedings.

"The fundamental question of patent is whether it really represents a monopoly; it's a question which has been struggled with since medieval times," Alexander Poltorak, CEO of IPR firm General Patent, told TotalTelecom. "And the one exception to that rule is standard-essential patent, where patent law becomes intertwined with antitrust law."