According to a Bloomberg report, Motorola Mobility would need to overcome hurdles in the European Union in order to thwart Apple Inc via legal means with regard to mobile phone patents. EU competition commissioner Joaquin Almunia told reporters on February 7 in London that the Google Inc mobile phone unit will obtain a prohibition decision for its battle with the iPhone maker. Rulings of this nature, said Bloomberg, included an order for behavior modification. Almunia was not clear whether Motorola Mobility will be subject to fines.
The EU had been taking steps to crack down potential abuses of patents as mobile phone players Motorola Mobility, Apple, Microsoft Corp and Samsung Electronics Co trade court victories across the globe on intellectual property claims. Bloomberg said Almunia is intent to target the rules of the game behind the intellectual property wards to prevent companies from leveraging their inventions unfairly in order to succeed over rivals.
Apple is not the only company Motorola Mobility has been fighting off. In an earlier report by Bloomberg, the Google phone unit is set to face a new trial against Intellectual Ventures regarding mobile-device technology patents. The decision came to be after the jury at the last trial was not able to agree on a verdict after two days of deliberations.The patent-licensing firm, which filed the lawsuit in October almost three years ago, claimed that Motorola Mobility had infringed three of the former's patents.
The database of the patent assignments of the US Patent and Trademark Office indicate, however, that the patents cited in Intellectual Ventures' lawsuit were in the invention sessions of Motorola Mobility, Bloomberg noted.
Intellectual Ventures' chief litigation counsel Melissa Finocchio said in a statement, "We are looking ahead to the retrial on these patents and also to our two other upcoming trials with Motorola Mobility Inc. later this year."
In an emailed statement, Motorola Mobility spokesman William Moss said, "We continue to believe this lawsuit was based on overbroad patent claims."
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