Microsoft isn’t too happy about Motorola and its Android phones, so it’s taking the manufacturer to court. If you remember not too long ago, Microsoft is receiving licensing fees from HTC for the latter’s Android handsets. Now Microsoft is alleging that Motorola is infringing on seven of its patents, and may ask for an injunction on the import of several of Motorola’s smartphones.
The Inquirer reports:
Microsoft accused Motorola Mobility of infringing seven of its patents on Monday and called for a ban on imports to the US for some of its handsets, says Bloomberg. This would see US shoppers denied Motorola phones called the Droid 2, Droid X, Cliq XT, Devour, Backflip and Charm.
“We have a responsibility to our employees, customers, partners and shareholders to safeguard our intellectual property,” David Howard, Microsoft’s corporate VP and deputy general counsel for litigation said in an e-mail to Bloomberg. “Motorola is infringing our patents and we are confident that the ITC will rule in our favor.”
Google recently announced its intent to purchase Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion, primarily for its patents, so it’d be interesting to see how this plays out since Microsoft is suing Motorola for a small handful of those patents.
Motorola isn’t sitting back, however, and has announced that it plans to fight Microsoft for its own infringements on Moto’s patents. According to a Google spokesperson via The Inquirer, “We have also brought legal actions of our own in the U.S. and in Europe to address Microsoft’s large scale of infringement of Motorola Mobility’s patents.”
With the Google acquisition and the legal battles between Apple, Samsung and HTC, it looks like these patent wars are just going to escalate until they seem virtually pointless and do nothing but highlight the very broken patent system in the U.S.