Microsoft has swerved a potentially crushing blow to its vanishingly small mobile biz, after a US watchdog swiped away a request to block the import of its Lumia handsets into the country.
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The decision overturns an April ruling by a U.S. trade judge, who determined that Microsoft had indeed infringed on two wireless patents owned by InterDigital Inc., which would have led to a ban of those phones being sold overseas.
Compared to Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics, Microsoft enjoys a meager 3% share in the global smartphone market as per recent estimates.
Last month Microsoft took a $7.5 billion charge on its handset business that it purchased from Nokia previous year which forced them to a record quarterly loss. “He said: “[the] decision is disappointing but is expected to have a limited impact on our going-forward business, given the decline of the Nokia mobile device business under Microsoft’s control and its limited market position”.
A Microsoft spokesperson stated the corporate was “grateful the Commission stopped InterDigital from making an attempt to dam our merchandise”.
On Friday, InterDigital’s stock dropped 3 percent by end of day. The two companies have been at loggerheads over the amount InterDigital can charge for licensing its patents that are considered as essential for cellphone technology. As well as blocking the call for an import ban, the ITC stated that Microsoft did not infringe patents relating to the way mobiles make calls. The Delaware based company made its first move on Nokia in the year 2007, complaining about the infringement of the technology used for optimizing a device’s capability to connect to a network. But the commission on Friday ruled that Microsoft hadn’t actually violated the patents. Earlier in August, Microsoft had sued InterDigital claiming that the company violated antitrust law in US by not honoring promises to provide licenses on reasonable terms.
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Companies frequently sue both at the ITC, which has the authority to block the import of products that infringe a U.S. patent, and in district court to win monetary damages.
