Teece, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, was recently used by Google’s Motorola Mobility case against Microsoft related to H.264 patents.
According to this report, Googles complaint seeks to block Apple from importing the iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch and various Apple computers.
Apple has said MotorolaMobility is making unreasonable demands, and argues that phonesmade by Motorola Mobility and other handset manufacturers thatrun on Google’s Android operating system are copying keypatented features of the iPhone.
Todays lawsuit is only the latest in a long series of recent disputes between Apple and Motorola/Google, but it marks the first time that Motorola is filing one of these lawsuits since its acquisition by Google became final in February.
There has been plenty of animosity between the two in recent years and Google has certainly been supporting its Android partners against Apple behind the scenes, but the two have yet to step into the ring together.
Its not currently clear what exactly the patents are that Google is trying to defend with this new lawsuit, but we reached out to Motorola and a spokesperson confirmed to us that the company did indeed file a complaint with the ITC today.
According to a page posted by AllThingsD, Apple offered to license its patents to Samsung in October 2010 because the company was a “strategic supplier” to Apple.
We are still waiting to get more details and will update the post once we hear more, but based on what weve heard so far, the complaint will focus on technologies Apple uses in virtually all of its current hardware products.
Until then, here is Motorolas official statement regarding this complaint:“We would like to settle these patent matters, but Apple’s unwillingness to work out a license leaves us little choice but to defend ourselves and our engineers’ innovations.
Crabb means that Apple “is in pretty good shape with a view to the Wisconsin FRAND trial,” notes Florian Mueller of FOSS Patents.
He was one of Samsung’s first witnesses after a parade of Apple experts said Samsung phones and tablets violated Apple’s patents.
This was a standard essential patent, though, making an import ban based on the upcoming ruling in this previous case unlikely.
However, Judge Koh ruled that the British case involved different parties, different patents and different standards, making it insufficiently relevant to the case at hand.
Mueller also notes that if Motorola won a ban in this case, this wouldnt affect the iPhone 4S and new iPad 4G, as these use a Qualcomm chipset that falls outside of Motorolas patent claims.
In an attempt to invalidate some of Apple’s patents in the case, Samsung also presented evidence this week to show that Apple’s patents cover technological advances, like multitouch, that had already been developed before Apple claims to have invented it.
Given that we dont know enough about todays lawsuit, its currently impossible to say if Googles attempt to ban Apples imports based on the new lawsuit will have more teeth.
Naomi Harris is a business journalist based in Darwin, Australia. Naomi has a passion for financial markets and breaking news stories and loves writing about business news, stock market, and economic opinions that matters most to its audience. Naomi spends a lot of time discovering and researching latest financial markets and industry news stories in order to make sure the latest and greatest stories are brought to you first on BigBoardNews.com.
