“Yesterday Apple filed a summary judgment motion with the United States District Court for the Southern District of California (where Qualcomm is based) that is a major threat to Google’s (Motorola Mobility’s) ability to seek U.S. patent injunctions or import bans against Apple over cellular standard-essential patents (SEPs) regardless of what will or will not happen on the FRAND contract front between these companies,” Florian Müller writes for FOSS Patents.
“In practical terms, if its products using Qualcomm chips (and those which used other baseband chips, such as the iPhone 4, have been discontinued) were found licensed (which involves multiple considerations including the one relevant to Apple’s motion), Apple wouldn’t even have to win its appeal of a dismissed Wisconsin FRAND obligations case or (in the alternative to a successful appeal) bring a new FRAND determination action to preclude Google from the pursuit of injunctions under the framework laid out by the FTC-Google settlement,” Müller writes. “Motorola would be unable to seek any remedy (injunctive or monetary) based on cellular SEPs against Apple products coming with Qualcomm baseband chips if Apple succeeds with a patent exhaustion defense.”
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