The appeals court has also upheld a jury’s decision to award $14.5 million to Microsoft in a related trial.
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The jury decision specifically related to Google’s Motorola – now owned by Lenovo – breaching “its obligation to license the patents on fair and reasonable terms” explains the report.
New york city In an obstacle for Google Inc (GOOGL.O), a You can include.S.is attractive legal procedure controlled on Thursday the fact that the low certification ratio Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) makes sense to dip into the stash of Google’s Motorola Mobility asset appeared to be accurately set up.
The dispute began after Motorola sent a letter to Microsoft asking it to pay as much as $4 billion per year to license patents relating to the 802.11 standard that underpins Wi-Fi and the H.264 video encoding standard.
This massive damage demand was clearly a response to Microsoft’s opening salvo-but two courts have now found that doesn’t matter. Microsoft alleged that Motorola had breached that contract and sued. This was a major setback for Google for the appeals court to rule that the low licensing rate Microsoft pays to use Google’s Motorola Mobility patents have been properly set.
The Microsoft-Motorola trial was highly technical, but it was important in that no federal judge had before decided just what the oft-used “fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory” standard meant.
The 9 US Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco said a lower court judge properly determined the patents’ value even though the royalty rate was only a fraction of what Motorola had asked for. Apple and Intel filed briefs in support of Microsoft, while Qualcomm and Nokia sided with Motorola.
Google appealed the verdict and the royalty rate to the 9 Circuit.
It’s not clear yet what the future holds for this case.
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