“A U.S. trade panel said on Monday it would revisit an initial ruling that Apple Inc infringed one of four patents asserted by Motorola Mobility, now a Google Inc unit,” Diane Bartz and Dan Levine report for Reuters.
“ITC Judge Thomas Pender had said in a preliminary ruling that Apple infringed on a patent for eliminating noise and other interference during voice and data transmissions,” Bartz and Levine report. “Motorola Mobility had originally accused Apple of violating three other patents – including one for touchscreen technology – but the ITC judge found that the company infringed just one.”
Bartz and Levine report, “Motorola Mobility had asked for the infringing devices to be barred from importation into the United States. The full commission is expected to issue a final ruling in August.”
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MacDailyNews Take: FRANDtastic!
Florian Mueller writes for FOSS Patents, “The good news for Apple is that the Commission, the six-member decision-making body at the top of the ITC, is going to look into a couple of questions affecting both the infringement and the (in)validity analysis concerning the patent that Administrative Law Judge Thomas Pender deemed valid and infringed. There is also a possibility of the Commission overruling Judge Pender with respect to Motorola’s own use of that patent (only a patent holder who satisfies the domestic industry requirement can win an ITC exclusion order).”
“What could be even more important, especially with a view to other pending ITC investigations: eight of the Commission’s 13 review questions relate to the implications of a FRAND licensing obligation to the potential entry of an exclusion order,” Mueller writes. “The first of those questions relates to whether Apple somehow waived its right to raise the FRAND defense, but other questions relate to the possibility of a patent holder being generally barred from seeking an import ban over a FRAND-pledged standard-essential patent.”
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What the French, toast?
I think the system for FRAND parrents should be changed and simplified.
If you make your patented tech available to be part of a standard, you should have to agreet to a standard fee for all users up front then it would be up to the standards body to decide wether or not it is of enough value to include in the standard and everyone who uses it is on equal playing field price wise. Would save a boatload of legal trouble.