Motorola open to working with Microsoft, promptly sues Apple

October 6, 2010 | By Surur

eoe In a surprise turn around, Motorola has responded to being sued by Microsoft by countersuing…. Apple.

Motorola’s CEO today told Wall Street Journal that “lawsuits are part of the business” and the company was still "open to finding ways to work with Microsoft," but "it has to be a compelling offering."

Noting that Motorola would rather have done without the lawsuit, he however insisted with 20,000 to 40,000 patents "our intellectual property position is better than most," and “everyone has a responsibility to their IP holders”.

These statements normally precede a countersuit, but the target was rather unexpected.

Motorola today files suit against Apple for infringing 18 patents with its iPhone, iPad, iTouch and some of its computers.

The patents involved cover a variety of technologies, including Apple’s MobileMe service and its software application store, wireless email, proximity sensing, application management, location-based services and technology for synchronizing multiple devices.

They also complained to the ITC, asking to bar US imports of Apple products.

While this may just be the first volley of a series of lawsuits from Motorola their initial target is really interesting, and may be preceding a cross-licensing agreement with Microsoft.

Read more at Wall Street Journal and Yahoo here.

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About Surur

Site Admin and Windows Phone enthusiast, he has been using Windows Mobile devices since before they were called PocketPC’s. He is currently sporting a HTC 7 Trophy.

Tagged android, apple, motorola, windows phone 7

mark

Yeah. not sure what to make of that. Are this going this because they see the Apple/HTC suit as a direct assault on Android and want to make sure that fails?

BTW, I see that Gartner is out calling for WP7 to fail. Not unexpected coming from Gartner, but won't help overall.

http://twitter.com/AaronCT123 @AaronCT123

The majority of people probably don't follow that stuff anyway, and even people who are aware of it know that it's mainly used to push agendas/full of crud.

l3v5y

If they have 20 to 40 thousand patents, why sue with only 18?

mark

a) because they're probably not all applicable
b) because you probably want to lead with your strongest ones
c) because if it goes to trial few juries can even undertand one, far less 40K

http://twitter.com/chmun77 @chmun77

Alright!! Let the phone wars begin!

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