ITC Judge Rules Motorola's Android Phones Violate Microsoft Patent

 

A U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) judge on Tuesday ruled that Motorola Mobility infringed a Microsoft patent in making its Android handsets but did not violate six other patents for which Microsoft had made claims against Motorola.

Microsoft has accused Motorola Mobility of infringing its Windows Mobile and Windows Phone patents with phones running the Android mobile operating system owned by Google, which recently acquired Motorola Mobility. Those handsets include Motorola's Droid 2, Droid X, Cliq XT, Devour, and Backflip, as well as software associated with those devices. The software giant filed its initial complaint in October 2010.

The initial ruling by ITC Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) Theodore Essex will be reviewed by the full commission, which will make a final decision on the cast that is expected by April 20, 2012, according to a statement from Motorola.

Tuesday's initial ruling concerns Motorola's possible infringement of four claims in Microsoft's patent for "generating meeting requests and group scheduling from a mobile device," notes patent expert Florian Mueller on his Foss Patents blog.

"It's a fairly interesting patent," Mueller writes. "For business users, [it's] an essential feature. If they're on travel or even just at lunch or in a meeting room, they want to be able to schedule meetings without having to go back to their office. Scheduling meetings is also increasingly popular on some social networks, so it's probably a feature for both enterprise users and consumers.

"It remains to be seen how Motorola will address this issue as well as any other Android patent issues that will present themselves along the way, with many other cases and dozens of other patents still waiting for a decision."

Microsoft deputy general counsel David Howard said the company was "pleased with the ITC's initial determination." Not to be outdone, a legal spokesman for Motorola said his company was "very pleased" with the ruling.

"We are very pleased that the majority of the rulings were favorable to Motorola Mobility," said Scott Offer, senior vice president and general counsel of Motorola Mobility. "The ALJ's initial determination may provide clarity on the definition of the Microsoft 566 patent for which a violation was found and will help us avoid infringement of this patent in the U.S. market."

Microsoft is also suing Motorola over the latter company's royalty rates for wireless networking and video technologies, while Motorola has its own patent claims against Microsoft that concern several of the software maker's key products, including Windows 7, Windows Phone 7, Bing, Windows Live Messaging, and the Xbox game console.