Jury gives Microsoft victory over Motorola in patent trial

On Wednesday, a jury ruled in favor of Microsoft in a patent trial against Google subsidiary Motorola. At issue was Motorola's failure to license certain patents to the Redmond based company at a fair and reasonable rate. Microsoft was awarded $14 million by the jury, about half of what the company had asked for. That included $11 million that Microsoft spent to relocate a warehouse in Germany due to an injunction against the software giant requested by Motorola. An additional $3 million covered legal costs incurred by Microsoft to fight the injunction.

Last year, in a trial heard in Seattle, a judge ruled that the appropriate licensing rate for Microsoft to pay to use Motorola patents for the Xbox was a small percentage of the amount that Motorola was seeking. Motorola wanted $4 billion a year for the rights to use the patents while the Judge ruled that $1.8 million was the proper fee.

In the most recent case, the judge said that Motorola was seeking too much to license patents like the H.264 video standard and a patent on Wi-Fi connectivity. Motorola says that it will appeal the decision.


source: Reuters

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