Motorola Gadgets Barred From Entering U.S. Over Microsoft Patent Fight

By Diane Bartz

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Some Motorola Mobility smartphones infringe on a Microsoft patent and will be barred from importation to the United States, a U.S. trade panel said on Friday.

The order by the U.S. International Trade Commission has been sent to President Barack Obama, who has 60 days to consider whether to overturn it for policy reasons.

The legal fight at the ITC is one of dozens globally between various smartphone makers. Google's Android system has become the top-selling smartphone operating system, ahead of mobile systems by Apple, Microsoft, Research in Motion and others.

On Wednesday, some of HTC's smartphone models were stopped at the U.S. border because it lost a patent dispute with Apple at the ITC in December. Shares in HTC tumbled more than 6 percent on news that shipments of the phones were being held up by U.S. customs.

The ITC order did not say which models of Motorola Mobility smartphone were affected but Microsoft has asked for the following devices to be stopped at the U.S. border: the Atrix, Backflip, Bravo, Charm, Cliq, Cliq 2, Cliq XT, Defy, Devour, Droid 2, Droid 2 Global, Droid Pro, Droid X, Droid X2, Flipout, Flipside, Spice and the Xoom tablet.

The patented technology at issue makes it possible for users to generate meeting requests and schedule gatherings using their mobile devices.

One option for Motorola Mobility will be to remove the meeting-scheduling technology from its smartphones and tablets. The company could also license it from Microsoft.

Motorola Mobility, which is in the process of being acquired by Google, said the company would not feel any near-term impact.

"Although we are disappointed by the commission's ruling that certain Motorola Mobility products violated one patent, we look forward to reading the full opinion to understand its reasoning," the company said in an emailed statement. "We will explore all options including appeal."

Both sides can appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.

Microsoft said it was pleased with the decision. "We hope that now Motorola will be willing to join the vast majority of Android device makers selling phones in the US by taking a license to our patents," a company spokeswoman said via email.

In a complaint filed in October 2010 with the ITC, Microsoft accused Motorola Mobility of infringing nine patents for Windows Mobile and Windows Phone.

Two patents were dropped during litigation. An ITC administrative law judge in December found that Motorola Mobility infringed on one Microsoft patent in making Android cellphones but did not infringe on six others.

Google's Android software has recently become the most popular cellphone operating system with 56 percent of the market in the first quarter of 2012, according to data from Gartner Inc.

Motorola, which makes Android phones, is one of the smaller mobile phone makers with 8.4 million units sold globally in the last quarter, according to Gartner.

The ITC is a popular venue for patent litigation since it has the power to forbid the importation of products that infringe on patents.

The case at the ITC is No. 337-744.

(Reporting By Diane Bartz; Editing by Tim Dobbyn, Gary Hill)

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Comments

[jishosan]

07:55 AM on 05/21/2012

You know, if I didn't know our US patent system, I wouldn't actually believe that MS had a patent for "scheduling meetings on mobile devices". Really? That's innovative? That's patent-worthy? The US Patent Office needs disassembled and reworked from scratch. Patents and the lack thereof are on of the largest drains on US innovation, and we need to treat it with the importance it deserves, not toss through dozens of patents and quotas on patent examiners.

[Mysteryprincess]

04:26 AM on 05/21/2012

America is such a free country!

[Rhustum Evaristo]

01:50 AM on 05/21/2012

another Apple and Samsung

[SueZbell]

05:39 PM on 05/20/2012

To promote advancement of current technologies the length of a patent should be substantially shortened and the patent office should stop awarding patents on methods rather than objects.

[becky bradshaw]

11:34 AM on 05/20/2012

Motorola is a pitiful metaphor for the technology companies in the United States. The wrod "Motorola" was once a synonym for cellphone. They, for all practical purposes, invented the cellphone. The first words from the moon were transmitted on Motorola communication devices. Motorola was a technology icon.

Now Motorola exists in name only, bought by Google for its significant collection of patents. But Motorola doesn't really exist anymore outside of this ethereal world. The devices that have been banned from import are 100% foreign product. Designed and built foreign, everything but the marketing campaign. Maybe the lawyers are still Americans.

[rockyrococoAZ]

05:44 AM on 05/21/2012

Yeah, my thought was that the phones should all be banned for import into the US... make them here instead. We need a resurgence of demand-side economics.

[Ansdlmol]

01:43 PM on 05/21/2012

If you do that then other countries will return the favour and you will end up worse off. The USA desperately needs to sell its products abroad. Better to compete by making a better product than by banning the opposition.

[OverseasVet]

10:14 AM on 05/20/2012

I'll have to get one before returning to that bastion of free trade. Is it a capital offense to play an MP3 on a Motorola phone?

[DataBoy]

10:30 AM on 05/20/2012

No, but I hear the Enter key is is jeopardy...

[Lechiffre]

10:31 AM on 05/20/2012

Uh.. you'll have to play .avi or .asf from now on lol!

[LuLou Murder]

01:12 PM on 05/20/2012

You can have my FLACs when you pry them from my cold dead hard drive.

[frank1946]

09:55 AM on 05/20/2012

Patents have value ?

Very Cool. Theft is not acceptable, please pay at the Cashier when you leave !

[RobJames]

09:33 AM on 05/20/2012

Google is going to get this overturned, and the President is going to get some big money for his SuperPac.

[Foxiloxi]

08:51 AM on 05/20/2012

I used to enjoy using microsofts products but I really don't now. The latest Windows is more complex, not simpler. I bought the latest Word word processor program and saw that they had changed everything around. Why not leave the GUI the same? Why force me to relearn where everything is? It's unlikely that I will buy Windows Eight. By the time I need a new computer I will probably consider Chrome or Android.

[SublimeAntithesis]

10:09 AM on 05/20/2012

I have a nice DOS 6.0 based 386 in a closet somewhere that would be just perfect for you!

[Lechiffre]

10:32 AM on 05/20/2012

I'll arrange a fedex for him ha ha ha he deserves it lmao!

[Rick Huggins]

12:36 PM on 05/20/2012

It's not that difficult, just take a little time, honest.

[cincypix]

08:39 AM on 05/20/2012

Patent tro-la-las ... so I guess the PC one the Texas courts stopped a few months back has found a new bridge?

[Linda from Deerfield]

08:31 AM on 05/20/2012

Motorola invented the cellphone. Laying out who's who, but choosing to leave out the fact that Motorola is the true mother of all cellphone makers, is kind of mean.

[Lechiffre]

10:34 AM on 05/20/2012

True; this is despicable.

[gdauth]

07:37 AM on 05/20/2012

This just points out once again what is wrong with American business. They spend more time in the courtroom than they do in engineering labs creating new products. The lawyers are destroying industry and innovation. They should be rounded up and stood up against a wall. Lawyers are dedicated to splitting up the pie, engineers are dedicated to making the pie bigger.

[SublimeAntithesis]

10:15 AM on 05/20/2012

Exactly! Remember Sun Microsystems? They spent the entire 90's suing MS and completely let their business die with almost zero technology growth. They did produce the Java programming language but they mucked that all up like everything else Scott McNealy touched.

[DataBoy]

10:40 AM on 05/20/2012

While I agree that there is far too much litigation in big business, the flip side to that is that America is one of the few countries where you can sign a contract and actually have a hope of it being executed by your counterparts; the price we pay for success, in a pretty large way. (It's a huge problem elsewhere, and you have to arm yourself to the teeth with leverage to get anything done, which slows progress to a snail's pace, literally [with slime trails])

I work in technical circles (not cellphones anymore, that was then) and I rarely see any litigation, even in 8-figure jobs. I've been involved in two legal proceeding in 30 years, one was a liability shotgun, and the other was a contract enforcement thing.

Patent law has new challenges because the Congress seen fit to usurp "prior art" as sending your idea to yourself in a sealed envelope used to pass for, just this past year. Everything is different, now, with patents, and it's first to file that wins these days. Big business, and their lawyers, as you point out, win against innovation moving forward. While this particular suit is old news and not a result of recent machinations, strap on your seatbelt because we're about to see new legal/patent horizons.

[AAKAlan]

04:30 AM on 05/20/2012

Familiar story, with a familiar ending. Company that can't succeed in the marketplace with quality and innovation, mines their obscure patents to prevent the competition from functioning. Microsoft did it to Apple, Apple did it to Samsung, Now Microsoft is going after Android.

Sadly, most of these patents do not hold up in court because they usually involve "obvious" inventions. They don't care. They just want to delay the success of competing products to give them an edge.

Amazon tried to enforce "one-click" ordering, an idea so obvious and ubiquitous that it wasn't patentable, and lost.

I'm sure that courts will find that "scheduling a meeting" on a mobile phone will likely not withstand scrutiny, either. Or Google can just come up with an even better way of doing it that closes Microsoft out.

Microsoft doesn't really care if they win, as long as they delay Motorola's sales for a few months while they release the new Windows for phones. And this, from a company that was fined $400 million for stealing code outright.

Who, ultimately, pays the price for this? The consumer, of course, who will be unable to buy certain phones they want and the price of phones will go up. They will suffer from inferior technology (as they have for decades now, with Windows bugs, vulnerabilities and incompatibilities) and Microsoft will not gain one single new customer for taking away choice from potential customers.

Shame on the lawyers, and on the ITC for taking this action.

[GreenEggsAndBacon]

09:17 AM on 05/20/2012

How much did Motorola pay you for this post?

[DataBoy]

10:43 AM on 05/20/2012

What kind of a question is THAT?

His post is spot-on; yours, contrarily, is merely contrary. Why?

[Footwarrior]

11:30 AM on 05/20/2012

The sad fact is that the patents that are most valuable are often the obvious solutions to a problem. But in the field of software, the patent office has a long history of awarding such patents. Often awarding patents for techniques in common use long before the invention was claimed.

[lkim65]

03:57 AM on 05/20/2012

Ah yes, patent abuse run amok....

[atexasdem]

03:50 AM on 05/20/2012

The rest of the developed world is so far ahead of the US in both smart phone speeds and internet system reliability and speed that eliminating the importation of the latest smart phones won't make a difference anyway.