“The patent injunction portion of Google’s antitrust settlement with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission this week won’t mean an end to patent disputes between Google and mobile device makers, but it does take away one major threat Google has used against competitors, some patent experts said,” Grant Gross reports for PCWorld.
“Google, in the settlement announced Thursday, pledged to not seek injunctions in most patent disputes involving standards-essential technologies in the mobile and Web markets,” Gross reports. “The FTC accused Google, after its $12.5 billion acquisition of Motorola Mobility in May 2012, of reneging on commitments to offer some patents on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory, or FRAND, terms.”
Gross reports, “Google’s commitment to stop seeking most injunctions against products it believes to be infringing its patents means the company has one less tool at its disposal in patent infringement disputes, but the disputes will continue, said David Long, an intellectual property lawyer in the Dow Lohnes law firm in Washington, D.C. The FTC settlement doesn’t prohibit Google from seeking injunctions, but requires they go through six months of negotiations and an arbitration proceeding before doing so. The settlement ‘gets rid of some of the ambiguity and risk associated with being confronted with a standards-essential patent,’ Long said. ‘Injunctive relief is off the table.'”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Carl H.” for the heads up.]