Motorola Mobility, a subsidiary of Google, Thursday appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit an ITC ban won by, no not Apple, but Microsoft, that took effect this week, requiring the removal of a meeting scheduler feature.
…Google isn’t comfortable with this outcome: a company for which it just paid $12.5 billion is not allowed to import devices into the United States that provide the full range of Android’s functionality. Unlike Motorola’s gadgets, more than 70% of all Android devices sold in the United States have a royalty-bearing patent license from Microsoft. Those device makers who have a license are still able to provide the meeting scheduler feature to their customers.
Over a month ago, Microsoft filed its own appeal against the ITC decision, asking for a reversal of unfavorable parts relating to other patents in a quest for an import ban of even broader technical scope. The Federal Circuit could possibly now consolidate the two appeals into one.
FOSS says they believe that, “Motorola Mobility will request this in an effort to slow down Microsoft’s appeal. Microsoft has a handful of patents in play that the ITC did not consider to be both valid and infringed by Android, so in statistical terms, the likelihood of the import ban being broadened by the Federal Circuit is substantially greater than that of the import ban being lifted.”
Another ITC decision involving Motorola Mobility was appealed to the Federal Circuit recently. It is the dismissal of Apple’s three-patent complaint.
The Federal Circuit is playing an increasingly important role in the long line of smartphone patent disputes. On Thursday it decided to not stay a preliminary injunction Apple had won against the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1.
