Bloomberg reports that Google owned Motorola Mobility has filed a new patent infringement lawsuit against Apple with the International Trade Commission (ITC), asking for a ban on the import of iPhones, iPads, iPod touch and Macs in the US.
This is Motorola’s second lawsuit against Apple with the ITC. A preliminary ruling in the previous Apple versus Motorola trial held Apple guilty of infringing one of Motorola’s patent. The final ruling for the case is due to be announced by August 24th.
From Bloomberg’s report:
Google Inc.’s Motorola Mobility unit said it filed a new patent-infringement case against Apple Inc. claiming that features on some Apple devices, including the Siri voice-recognition program, infringe its patents.
The complaint at the U.S. International Trade Commission claims infringement of seven Motorola Mobility patents on features including location reminders, e-mail notification and phone/video players, Motorola Mobility said yesterday. The case seeks a ban on U.S. imports of devices including the iPhone, iPad and Mac computers.
Motorola’s statement on the lawsuit, as given to Bloomberg:
“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 seven patents are all non standards essential, which means that Motorola is under no obligation to license them to any company.
Florian Mueller speculates on the reasons Motorola filed a second suit:
The announcement of this new complaint may be driven in part by a desire to demonstrate that Motorola isn’t finished even if its first ITC complaint against Apple may fail (in its entirety, or for the most part). Another possible motivation on Google’s part is that the acquisition of Motorola Mobility has not been money well spent so far. And a third reason could be that Apple has the upper hand in its dispute with Samsung and may receive a favorable verdict, possibly as early as next week, which would call into question Google’s ability to bring about the patent peace it promised a year ago when it announced the Motorola deal.
Android manufacturers would be glad to see Google using its intellectual property to stand up against Apple, hoping that this could lead to some sort of a cross licensing agreement between the two companies. Whether Motorola’s claims of patent infringement actually hold up in court is something that we’ll only know when the trial starts, which typically takes months, if not years.
