Patent war: advantage Motorola Mobility against Apple

In a preliminary decision, the ITC believes that Motorola Mobility is not guilty of violating numerous patents held by Apple, reducing the risk that their mobile devices will be blocked from distribution in the United States.

While Apple has often scored points against Samsung in a range of law suits over the last few months, it appears that things are more difficult against Motorola. After having scored an initial victory in December 2011 in Germany, Google’s future acquisition has now obtained another, this time in the United States.

The ITC (International Trade Commission), responsible for regulating litigation, has handed down a preliminary decision which rejects Apple’s accusations of patent violation. Three patents were questioned, but none of the alleged incidents was deemed to be relevant, greatly reducing the risk that Motorola Mobility products would be blocked from points of sale in the United States.


Advantage Motorola
This is an intermediary decision which still has to be definitively validated, but it does weaken Apple’s position as this filing was made as return fire against an opening attack made by Motorola in October 2010 which questioned twenty patents.

Despite a minor victory against HTC which did little more than slightly hurt that company’s image, Apple’s legal filings for patent violations appear to be difficult prove, and even more so to get competing products blocked from the market place. This is likely because of the heavy consequences that such a penalty implies.