Grant Gross
Senior Writer

Motorola, Microsoft suspend some patent disputes until trial

news
Jul 11, 20122 mins

The two companies agree to wait until a trial on Microsoft's complaint about Motorola RAND licensing

Motorola Mobility and Microsoft have agreed to suspend their patent claims against each other in three U.S. cases until a November trial on Microsoft claims that Motorola has not lived up to promises to license some video and Wi-Fi patents on RAND (reasonable and non-discriminatory) terms.

The two companies, involved in three patent lawsuits in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, agreed to stay their lawsuits against each other while the two sides concentrate on the RAND license issues to be addressed in Nov. 13 trial, according to court documents. On Tuesday, the two companies filed a joint motion to stay all patent infringement claims.

[ Stay ahead of the key tech business news with InfoWorld’s Today’s Headlines: First Look newsletter. | Read Bill Snyder’s Tech’s Bottom Line blog for what the key business trends mean to you. ]

The patent claims will be suspended until the trial, and a possible appeal, is resolved, according to the joint motion.

Representatives of the two companies didn’t immediately respond to a request for comments. The FOSS Patents blog originally reported the agreement.

Microsoft’s November 2010 RAND complaint against Motorola Mobility, now owned by Google, accuses the company of not licensing its patents for the 802.11 Wi-Fi standard and the H.264 video codec standard on RAND terms, as it had promised to standards bodies.

In November 2010, Motorola filed a complaint against Microsoft for allegedly infringing seven patents. A month later, Motorola filed another complaint, alleging that Microsoft has infringed three Motorola patents related to mobile computing and telepresence.

Grant Gross covers technology and telecom policy in the U.S. government for The IDG News Service. Follow Grant on Twitter at GrantGross. Grant’s e-mail address is grant_gross@idg.com.

Grant Gross

Grant Gross, a senior writer at CIO, is a long-time IT journalist who has focused on AI, enterprise technology, and tech policy. He previously served as Washington, D.C., correspondent and later senior editor at IDG News Service. Earlier in his career, he was managing editor at Linux.com and news editor at tech careers site Techies.com. As a tech policy expert, he has appeared on C-SPAN and the giant NTN24 Spanish-language cable news network. In the distant past, he worked as a reporter and editor at newspapers in Minnesota and the Dakotas. A finalist for Best Range of Work by a Single Author for both the Eddie Awards and the Neal Awards, Grant was recently recognized with an ASBPE Regional Silver award for his article “Agentic AI: Decisive, operational AI arrives in business.”

More from this author