Patent wars: Microsoft takes Motorola to EU

Microsoft on Wednesday filed a complaint with the European Commission against Google‘s Motorola Mobility in the latest salvo in an increasingly bitter patent war between technology giants.

Apple, which is embroiled in a multi-continent patent fight with South Korea’s Samsung, lodged a similar complaint against Motorola Mobility with European competition regulators last week.

Both Microsoft and Apple accuse Motorola Mobility, which is being acquired by Google for $12.5 billion, of unfairly using its patent portfolio to try to block competing products.

At issue are what are known as standard essential patents. SEPs are patents that have been identified by technology companies as necessary to allow them to build compatible products.

Motorola Mobility is failing to live up to an industry pledge to license SEPs to rivals on fair, reasonable and nondiscriminatory terms, according to Microsoft and Apple.

“Motorola is attempting to block sales of Windows PCs, our Xbox game console and other products,” Microsoft deputy general counsel Dave Heiner said, explaining the software giant’s decision to file a complaint with the EC.

“Motorola is demanding that Microsoft take its products off the market, or else remove their standards-based ability to play video and connect wirelessly,” Heiner said in a blog post.

“(Motorola Mobility) is on a path to use standard essential patents to kill video on the Web, and Google as its new owner doesn’t seem to be willing to change course,” he said.

US and European regulators gave the green light last week to Google’s acquisition of Motorola Mobility.

Google, whose Android software is used by smartphone and tablet computer makers, acquired 17,000 patents with the purchase of the Illinois-based maker of mobile phones, tablet computers and television set-top boxes.

Announcing the acquisition in August, Google chief executive Larry Page said it will “enable us to better protect Android from anti-competitive threats from Microsoft, Apple and other companies.”

The US Justice Department’s antitrust division, in approving the Google-Motorola Mobility deal, said Google, Apple and Microsoft had made commitments concerning their SEP licensing policies.

“The division’s concerns about the potential anticompetitive use of SEPs was lessened by the clear commitments by Apple and Microsoft to license SEPs on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory terms,” it said.

Google’s commitments, however, “were more ambiguous and do not provide the same direct confirmation of its SEP licensing policies,” the department said.

Heiner said Motorola Mobility “has refused to make its patents available at anything remotely close to a reasonable price.

“For a $1,000 laptop, Motorola is demanding that Microsoft pay a royalty of $22.50 for its 50 patents on the video standard,” he said, while a group of 29 companies was making 2,300 other patents available for just two cents.

“If every firm priced its standard essential patents like Motorola, the cost of the patents would be greater than all the other costs combined in making PCs, tablets, smartphones and other devices,” Heiner said.

Microsoft was not using SEPs in an attempt to block smartphones or tablets running Android, Heiner said, and he appealed to Google to change course.

“For a company so publicly committed to protecting the Internet, one might expect them to join the growing consensus against using standard essential patents to block products,” he said.

Patent analyst Florian Mueller said on his FOSS Patents blog he expected the EC to “make a determination on the launch of full-blown investigations within a few months.”

Mueller added that “if every owner of standard-essential patents behaved like Motorola, this industry would be in chaos, and grind to a halt.

“It’s key that the owners of such patents act responsibly, and if some of them don’t, antitrust intervention is needed,” he said.

“I don’t dispute any company’s right to defend its intellectual property vigorously, but when standard-essential patents are involved, there must be clear limits.”

Article source: http://news.yahoo.com/microsoft-files-ec-complaint-against-motorola-mobility-151259000.html

RSS Computer Security News
  • UK government staff caught snooping on citizen data
    Don't worry about hackers illegally accessing government systems. It turns out government workers and civil servants who are trusted with private citizen data are more likely to access your data illegally. […]
  • social network makes stock market debut – live blog
    Zuckerberg appears to confirm in one message that he secretly hacked into the website of the Harvard University newspaper, the Crimson, by guessing the emails and passwords of two people in the college database."So I want to read what they said about me before the article came out and after I complained," he told a friend. […]
  • Police Blotter: Phone Hacker Makes Overseas Calls
    ALCOHOL Sungjoon Um, 22, of the 20800 block of Elizabeth Avenue, Lincolnshire, was charged with driving under the influence and speeding at 2:25 a.m. May 17 on westbound Lake-Cook Road from Milwaukee Avenue. […]
  • Who Did the WikiLeaks DDoS Attack?
    Free Email Newsletters Sign Up for free email updates from PCMag: Daily news, new products, security, deals, DIY, and more Whistleblowing site Wikileaks is up and running again after a massive DDoS attack knocked it offline for three days. […]
  • Android Hackers Hone Their Skills in Russia
    The malware business growing around Google Android -- now the leading smartphone operating system -- is still in its infancy . […]
  • Mac-based Flashback click fraud campaign was a bust
    The hackers in charge of the Flashback botnet managed to generate $14,000 from their click fraud campaign, but have not been paid, Symantec said today. […]
  • House Intel Chairman Predicts Major Cyber Attack on US
    Cadets engaged during the annual Cyber Defense Exercise at West Point. Established in 2001 by West Point in collaboration and support from the National Security Agency the exercise challenges each team to design, build and configure a real-world computer network and simulates a deployed joint service command. […]
  • Hacker steals card details with Call of Duty virus
    Hacker Lewys Martin, 20, offered a "patch" to users of the popular video game Call Of Duty - but secretly hid a trojan horse virus inside. […]
  • Bulgaria's Transport Minister: Phishing Accounts for 46% of Cyber Attacks
    Hotels 5* Hotels 4* Hotels 3* Apartment Houses Restaurants Rent-a-car Casino Golf Resorts Mountain resorts Sea resorts Entertainment Shopping Health Clinics Public Safety Vaults Beauty Salons In 2011 and the first quarter of 2012, 46% of attacks on network infrastructure were phishing , according to Ivaylo Moskovski , Minister of Transport , ... (more) […]
  • Revenge Porn Kingpin Hunter Moore Is Under Investigation By the FBI [Is Anyone Up]
    We've been waiting for the other shoe to drop in the bizarre shuttering of revenge porn site Is Anyone Up last month, and here it is: Hunter Moore, the site's shithead owner, is being investigated by the FBI . […]