Newsbrief: As part of Motorola Mobility's lawsuit against Microsoft over alleged patent infringements, a German court has granted Motorola an injunction against the distribution of various Microsoft products in Germany.
The ban includes the Xbox 360, Windows 7, Internet Explorer and Windows Media Player, reports the BBC, and comes as Motorola alleges that Microsoft is infringing on its video coding and playback patents. Motorola must now wait until next week, when a U.S. court will deliberate over whether the action should be enforced.
A U.S. judge ruled last week that Microsoft has infringed on a number of Motorola Mobility's patents with its Xbox 360 console, and a full commission board will now review the decision and issue a final ruling in August.
A looot of patent lawsuits seem to be happening lately. Not sure if I haven't been paying attention until the past few years and it's always been this bad or if it's ramping up in frequency, but it really seems like tech companies are just spraying and praying with their code/hardware and then just dealing with whatever lawsuits that might bring as if it was standard operations. I wouldn't be surprised if companies budget patent lawsuit settlements into their financial reports, treating it like an operating cost instead of a law to avoid infringing. Is the patent system even acting as a deterrent or is it just a complication in the game of business?
Companies usually aren't as bad as patent trolls. Even in this case Microsoft agrees that they should be paying royalties, their issue is just that Motorola isn't sticking to an agreement that they'd charge reasonable non-discriminatory royalties for those patents.
Wow this patent lawsuit attack was totally unprovoked, Microsoft would never do such a thing to Motorola. In retaliation Microsoft should sue Motorola for all of the patent infringing their Android phones do. That will show them!!
