ITC Judge: Motorola Mobility Infringed Microsoft Patent

chrb writes "An International Trade Commission judge has issued a preliminary ruling that Motorola Mobility infringed one of Microsoft's patents. The disputed patent covers storing a meeting request on a mobile device, and was rejected by the European Patent Office as being 'obvious.' The judge also ruled that six other Microsoft patents were not being infringed. Experts say that this will strengthen Microsoft's hand in collecting patent fees on Android. Microsoft recently claimed that it now collects patent fees on over half of all Android devices sold."

Comments

Re:Slashdot: now part of Microsoft

[ozmanjusri]

Reread the first sentence then get back to us!

I'm back.

Some balance from the Wall Street Journal:
Motorola Mobility Claims Patent Win Against Microsoft
Judge rules in favor of Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc on six of seven Microsoft Corp patents
http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20111220-716842.html

Microsoft has had six patents invalidated and will be forced to provide clarity on patent 566 (sharing calendar events). That means other companies will be able to work around the patent without paying Microsoft's extortion fee. It's an excellent first step in pulling the fangs of their patent trolling.

No you didn't

[Mathinker]

You totally miss the implications of his post (possibly because he forgot to add the phrase "all of" to "Once all of the patents are identified"). Just because Microsoft decided to use X numbers of patents against Motorola doesn't mean they don't have another Y waiting in line for the next court case. So your quoted source makes no difference.

Since there is no legal way to require Microsoft to reveal all of the patents they think might infringe on Android, his post is, rather than FUD, merely fantasy. The fact that it is fantasy showcases a major problem with the patent system. The law should be that if someone pays licensing fees, they can require the party they are paying to reveal all of their patents which they feel are infringed (by that particular technology), and any patents which are not revealed are automatically rendered toothless (against that particular technology), even against third parties. (Now I'm fading into fantasy... <sigh/>)

> no one has resources to track down all the reasons why they are crap, and sue Microsoft over each and every of them.

You also missed a second major problem with his post: there is no legal penalty for filing an invalid patent. Or at least, for all practical purposes.