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Tuesday, October 2, 2012

Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) Motorola fails to get U.S. court uphold German Sales Ban on Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT)


Not all injunctions can be enforced and those involved in patent disputes should be warned.

On Friday, a U.S. court for appeals turned down a request by Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG)’s Motorola Mobility to enforce a patent injunction on traditional rival Microsoft that it had obtained in Germany.

The injunction "would have barred Microsoft from "offering, marketing, using or importing or possessing" in Germany some products including the Xbox 360 and certain Windows software," Reuters reported on the ruling.

Motorola had filed a lawsuit against Microsoft in Germany, after the Redmond-based software giant had sued the Google unit in 2010 in the United States, alleging that the company was asking for too much in royalties for the use of its patents in its gaming console XBox 360 and other products and for breach of contract.

It got a German court in Mannheim to issue a sales injunction on Microsoft's products, related to the patents under dispute.

Microsoft then got U.S. District judge James Robart to put the German order on hold.

"In its ruling on Friday, a three-judge 9th Circuit unanimously upheld Robart's order. Since Microsoft had already brought a lawsuit against Motorola for breach of contract in the United States, U.S. courts have the power to put the German injunction on hold, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said," according to the Reuters report.

"At bottom, this case is a private dispute under Washington state contract law between two U.S. corporations," the court ruled.

There are investigations against Motorola to find out whether it was over-charging Microsoft and Apple for the use of its patents on their products.

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