Motorola Vs Microsoft: U.S. Court Rules Against Enforcement Of Patent Injunction

The Motorola-Microsoft patent tussle over Xbox 360 and Windows software took an interesting turn Friday as a U.S. appeals court ruled Sept.28 that Google Inc's Motorola Mobility cannot enforce a patent injunction issued against the Redmond giant in Germany.

The injunction if enforced would have barred Microsoft from selling products in Germany including the Xbox 360 and Windows software, Reuters reported.

Predictably, while Microsoft was pleased with the ruling, Google's Motorola unit declined to comment on the same.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco issued the ruling that helps Microsoft win some credits against Google in Germany.

The tussle involves standards essential patents covering H.264 video encoding, which Motorola claims that Microsoft infringed on its standards essential patents for several products including Windows 7 and Xbox 360, The Verge noted.

The German court ruling observation was in line with Motorola's observation granting injunction against infringing products but it did not enforce any ban on infringing products. Earlier, a federal judge in Seattle restrained Motorola from enforcing a ban stating he had to decide on whether such a ban was appropriate with standards essential patents. The Friday ruling upheld the decision, The Verge has added.

As Microsoft filed a lawsuit against Motorola for breach of contract in the United States, U.S. courts are empowered to hold the injunction issued by German court, the 9th Circuit ruled.

"At bottom, this case is a private dispute under Washington state contract law between two U.S. corporations," the court ruled, according to Reuters.