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US Court Says Motorola Can't Enforce Microsoft Injunction In Germany
First time accepted submitter Chris453 writes "A U.S. appeals court on Friday ruled that Google Inc's Motorola Mobility unit cannot enforce a patent injunction that it obtained against Microsoft Corp in Germany, diminishing Google's leverage in the ongoing smartphone patent wars. Motorola won an injunction against Microsoft in May using their H.264 patents. Apparently the U.S. federal justices in California have worldwide jurisdiction over all court cases — Who knew? Maybe that is why Apple keeps winning lawsuits..."
You could try reading the article.
"At bottom, this case is a private dispute under Washington state contract law between two U.S. corporations," the court ruled.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Now you only only have to ban your other thousand companies from using software patents in Europe, and we will be very thankful.
How does it work?
Drone strikes!
A US court can, however, tell a US corporation whether it can seek to enforce an injunction granted in another jurisdiction.
The court isn't telling Germany to do or not do anything. They're telling Motorola that they cannot seek to have the injunction enforced because of an ongoing lawsuit over whether Motorola acted improperly regarding the fees they requested for the standards-essential patent(s) at issue.
The legal drinking age in Germany is 14 (for undistilled drinks given by a parent or guardian). By this court's reasoning, if a family went on vacation in Germany for Octoberfest and dad gave his 14 yo son a beer to drink, then it's a Washington State parent giving alcohol to an underage Washington State child, and he would be subject to fines and jail under the drinking laws of Washington State.
You see, you're sleeping over at a friends place - and your friend's mum said that you could have coke with your dinner even though your mum said you couldn't.
You can "forget" what your mum told you and have the coke anyway, you won't get in trouble at your friends house.
But you're sure gonna get it when you get home and your mum finds out. I mean, you could lie but...
It really doesnt matter if its a US corporation. If its operating in Germany, then its operations in germany are under German juristiction no ifs no buts.
We've had a few instances here in australia where a US court "overrules" an australian one from having juristiction. The australian court, naturally, systematically ignores it. Those clauses of "All disagreements must be heard in x state" you see in american contracts have no validity here. To quote a lawyer friend, "Us lawyers dont actually get to invent laws or nullify them with our contracts, no matter how clever we think we are".
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
The Appeals Court turned down the preliminary because the full case is still active in District. The German case will almost certainly influence the finding but the case is still on-going. Appeals Courts are for after a decision has been reached by the lower court.
tl;dr; they're not. Under German law, injunctions are enforced by the party, not the court. The US court has ordered that Motorola not enforce it until they've come to a conclusion in their case (which could affect the German court decision).
Long version, based on the CoA's judgment, available here:
Motorola claims to have patents in various jurisdictions covering vital steps of the H.264 video compression standard. When the ITU established H.264 as a standard, Motorola had to agree to license all relevant patents at RAND (reasonable and non-discriminatory) rates.
Back in 2010, Motorola asked Microsoft to licence its H.264 patents (for use in the various Windows and X-Box software) at what MS described as an unreasonable royalty rate. MS sued Motorola for breach of contract, on the grounds that Motorola's agreement with the ITU was a contract, which gave MS third-party benefits (and thus the right to sue to enforce it). [Third-party contract rights are an interesting area of law; some jurisdictions have them (e.g. the US), in some they are optional (e.g. England+Wales) and in others they don't exist (e.g. Germany).] Motorola responded by suing for patent infringement, and the cases were combined.
In 2011, while the US contract/patent case was going on, Motorola then filed a claim against MS for patent infringement in Germany, specifically for the two H.264 patents. As part of their claim, Motorola wanted an injunction banning the sale of Windows and X-Boxes in Germany. In May 2012, the German Court found in favour of Motorola and granted the injunction. However, as noted in the US CoA's judgment:
Under German law, if a party is given an injunction, they get to decide whether or not to enforce it, and if they do and it is subsequently overturned, they have to pay the other side damages to cover any losses.
So the question before the US CoA was whether or not the US courts could issue their own injunction ordering that Motorola not enforce the German injunction (Motorola, being a US-based company, is obviously within the court's jurisdiction). The District Court said they could, and the Court of Appeal have confirmed this. Their reasoning seems to be that *if* Motorola was in breach of contract by not licensing its patents to MS at RAND rates, then one remedy for MS would be a compulsory licence at such a rate. But such a licence would necessarily include *all* of Motorola's relevant patents, including the German ones. Thus MS would no longer be committing patent infringement in Germany, and the German injunction would be wrongly granted.
The US CoA's options were: allow Motorola to enforce the German injunction, and if the injunction were overturned (due to US rulings on the contract), Motorola would have to pay MS to compensate for any losses, *or* block Motorola from enforcing the German injunction and, if the injunction was not overturned (due to the US ruling), MS would have to pay Motorola to compensate for the losses.
The CoA seems to have sided with MS rather than Motorola, possibly because they felt Motorola had been a bit vexatious by suing in Germany while the US case was happening (it comes across as them trying to "forum shop" for the most friendly jurisdiction). So the CoA upheld the District Court's decision that, as the German injunction is sort of dependent on the US breach of contract case, Motorola shouldn't be allowed to enforce it until that case is over (some time in early 2013, possibly).
But IANAL, nor an expert in US or German patent
The difference is, the Australian court system will generally not hear cases between two American companies while a similar action is ongoing in their home country. They will also generally uphold the American ruling, unless it conflicts with Australian statutory law or legal principles.
Australia is a common law jurisdiction, although rulings from other common law jurisdictions is not binding precedent, it is certainly given a huge amount of respect. Germany uses a civil law system and does not consider itself connected in any way.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
But in this case it's more like the mum of your friend says "no coke in my house" and your mum says "don't care about what she says, I allow you to drink coke there, that's all that counts."
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Negative. At bottom it is a private dispute between Microsoft Germany and Google Germany. The fact that these are in turn, owned by US companies is immaterial. If these were really just "US corporations", they could not have filed a case in Germany in the first place. The judge is a moron.
An injunction is a court order instructing a party to do or not do something. Injunctions are enforced via threat of more legal action. In this context:
Microsoft sued Motorola Mobility / Google in the US in 2010 to enforce MM's licensing promise on a worldwide basis.
Motorola Mobility / Google sued Microsoft in Germany eight months later.
The German court granted an injunction in the German case to stop Microsoft from selling Xboxen and Windows in Germany while the court decides if Microsoft is violating Google's patents. Despite what might show up in headlines this is not the same thing as the German government banning those products. There is a whole bunch of nuance involved, but if Microsoft continued to sell the infringing products Google would need to bring a suit and the German court evaluates whether Microsoft did indeed violate the order and if so what to do about it.
What the US court did was grant an injunction to stop Google from bringing that suit while the US case is still going on. Basically the court is calling Google out on using the German court to try and get leverage to force Microsoft to settle the US suit that had been filed first. Google could ignore the US order and it is unlikely the German court would factor the US court's injunction into what it decides; however, if Google did that Microsoft could bring a suit against them in the US and the court would likely put quite a smack down in response.
In other words, the problem is the language used by the journalist. The US court didn't decide "Google can't enforce German Microsoft injunction" and the German court didn't "ban the sell of windows".
Does the recent Apple vs Samsung patent case ring any bells?
Look its actually VERY simple: The Germans can do whatever they want and they ruled Motorola can have MSFT products blocked. the US courts have said that if Motorola uses that right then they will lay the smack down on Motorola because they are basically trying to do an end run around the court because the MSFT suit was filed first.
So Motorola can STILL choose to block in Germany, but by doing so they may as well accept they have lost the lawsuit in the USA because the courts will punish them for doing so. It doesn't have a thing to do with the Germans, it has EVERYTHING to do with Motorola and their position in the court.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Of course they can. Countries are (mostly) sovereign, meaning they can pass any law they want, covering anyone, anywhere. The only limitation is the practicality of enforcing such laws (including, traditionally, the various wars that spring up when country A tries to assert control over part of country B). While this can cause problems with natural people (as the US has found with Assange; they can't really enforce their laws against him unless they can get hold of him, and they can't do that without breaking various international conventions, which will be diplomatically awkward), with companies it becomes really easy; you just enforce the ruling against any assets that company has in your jurisdiction.
Here, both Microsoft and Motorola are US-based companies (although the German ruling involved a subsidiary of Motorola), meaning many of their assets, and directors, will be in the US and thus within the reach of the US courts.
As a general rule, each company has to obey the laws of every country in which they operate (unlike people, companies can be in several countries at once*). If they break a law, and a court tries to enforce it against them, they either have to abandon that jurisdiction (and any connected ones), possibly surrendering all assets there, or comply, even if they are mainly based elsewhere. Of course, sometimes this can lead to major problems, as with Google and the Streetview screw-up; after revealing it had collected huge chunks of potentially-personal data, Google was ordered by some countries to immediately destroy it, but by others to preserve it so that official investigations could be carried out.
*Ok, there are a few points in the world where a person can do that as well, but there tends to be not a lot you can do at them.
They're not doing an end run around the court. If, according to German law, Motorola is in the right, then they have the right to enjoin (in Germany).
Many companies have to do a lot of things in foreign jurisdictions because of European (or other) laws. It's out of line for a US court to say that they can't do so because a case in a US court.
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
WTF? Go cry me a river. Since when does a company ( that isn't a monopoly ) have to be fair and charge 'reasonable' prices? Especially to the competition...
Here's one example:
Reasonable and non-discriminatory terms (RAND), also known as fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory terms (FRAND), are a licensing obligation that is often required by standard-setting organizations for members that participate in the standard-setting process.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_and_non-discriminatory_licensing
And how is that not the equivalent of claiming global jurisdiction? If you operate in territories A and B and a court with jurisdiction A wants to punish you for something you did in jurisdiction B, then that's effectively claiming jurisdiction. Particularly when it comes to fines you can nullify any foreign law, if Microsoft owes Motorola $100M in Germany and the US court gives $100M back then you're de facto rewriting German law, as long as both are big multinationals with no other choice than to have a US presence.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
So Motorola should go to the Mannheim court where it got the injunction and file a "contempt of court" motion against Microsoft for trying to circumvent the injunction without following proper procedure (filing a motion to lift the injunction in the proper courts in Germany). It won't help Motorola directly, but Microsoft might get some hefty fine for it.
It's a private dispute between Motorola (and hence Google) and Microsoft. But it's a cross-jurisdictional one, with lawsuits being filed all over the place (as with the Apple v Samsung fight). Yes, some of the cases involve various subsidiaries, including national branches, but there is enough cross-over between the cases that is isn't an issue, and both sides seem to have agreed that they were the same parties involved in both cases.
From footnote 7, page 10 of the US Court of Appeal's judgment:
For more details, see the argument in IV A, starting at page 18. Basically, the parties agreed that they were the same.
Also, as a Court of Appeal case, there were three judges involved, not just one, and just because someone gives a ruling you disagree with (perhaps based on factual misunderstandings), that doesn't make them morons.
Skimming the Wikipedia page of the Apple v Samsung battle, Apple have lost 4 rounds and Samsung 5 rounds. However, in some cases they've both lost, and some are being appealed (or have been appealed). Then some also involve counter-claims, whereas others are just one-sided. At the moment they're up to about 50 lawsuits in nearly a dozen countries. It's rather depressing.
However, I wouldn't say that Apple *keeps* winning. One hopes that the inconsistencies between the rulings are due to differences in laws (and as to what can be patented etc.) rather than due to judicial misconduct (although the US ruling seems to have involved a jury screw-up; although that may not be a deciding factor).
But yes, this was probably an inappropriate place for an Apple dig.
... since that company entered into a contract, one of the terms of which was that it would issue fair and non-discriminatory licences (that being a condition of getting the processes covered by the patents involved adopted as an official standard by the ITU).
Whether or not it has done so is something the court may rule on later this year, but a contract is a contract.
It's not a PATENT dispute at the core, it's a CONTRACT dispute, and Morotola sued about the breach in the US. International contract law is a huge, complicated area, so I'm going to have to assume a Federal judge knows more about the field than a bunch of armchair contract lawyers on slashdot - especially when both of the countries who entered into the contract are American, making the jurisdiction pretty obvious.
Here's a starting point if you really care... http://www.uncitral.org/uncitral/en/uncitral_texts/sale_goods/1980CISG.html