“Apple Inc., maker of the iPhone, asked a U.S. appeals court to revive its lawsuit claiming Google Inc.’s Motorola Mobility unit demanded unreasonably high royalties for standard mobile-phone technology,” Susan Decker reports for Bloomberg.
“‘You’re talking about billions of dollars hanging over the head of Apple,’ Apple lawyer Joshua Rosenkranz of Orrick Herrington, told a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington today,” Decker reports. “The breach-of-contract and antitrust case is part of a broader fight over how to value patents that relate to technological standards used across industries, such as how to access Wi-Fi signals or transmit pictures. A trial to set a royalty was thrown out after Apple said it wouldn’t license the patents unless the judge set a rate at $1 or less for each iPhone.”
“Apple and Motorola Mobility have been fighting over smartphone patents since October 2010, with no victory by either side. While Motorola Mobility filed suit first, it was brought as Cupertino, California-based Apple started suing other manufacturers claiming phones running on Google’s Android operating system were copying features of the iPhone,” Decker reports. “Because companies may benefit from having their own ideas adopted for industrywide use, they pledge to license any relevant patents on fair and reasonable terms without discriminating against competitors. In the case on appeal, Apple claimed that Motorola Mobility violated that pledge on technology for wireless and 3G transmissions. Motorola Mobility demanded ‘a rate that was more than 12 times what Motorola was charging other licensees for the same technology,’ Apple said in a July 23 filing with the Federal Circuit.”
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