Rare Victory: Motorola Wins A Patent Case Against Microsoft


Bangalore: Every other day seems like a good day for patent battles, and the latest to it, Motorola Mobility has won a patent dispute with software giant Microsoft before a German court. The Samsung versus Apple was clash of titans, but Motorola’s win over Microsoft is no less high octane event either.

Microsoft till now had won three patent suits against Motorola in Germany-- banning Moto mobiles which infringed Microsoft’s patents in country’s markets, in respect to the court order. In a twist of tale, the regional court in Mannheim ruled against its previous judgment, saying Motorola did not infringe Microsoft’s patent that enabled same applications to work on different handsets, which saved the time and efforts in writing specific codes for each devices.       

Germany is definitely turning out to be hot spot for tech battles by rivaling companies. According to Reuters, the reason could be a cheaper and quicker law processing compared to other jurisdictions.

Motorola Mobility’s acquisition by Google was said to be a sensible move, in an attempt to fend off Moto’s legal challenges against its Android OS. The acquisition cost Google a whopping $12.5 billion, the largest acquisition ever by the company. Considering the current scenario, it doesn’t seem to be a bad deal in long run, seeing patent disputes to be cumbersome and costing a mountain.