Two German courts say Apple infringed on two Motorola patents

Apple was the recipient of a little "Instant Karma" on Friday when two German courts ruled against Apple and found in favor of Motorola Mobility on two patent infringement charges. Motorola did to Apple exactly what the Cupertino based firm did to Samsung in having some of the Korean manufacturer's products pulled from stores in Germany and Australia. The injunction granted by the German court could allow Motorola to block the sales of certain Apple products in the country.

The documents involved in this case appear to show that all of Apple's mobile devices are affected by the ruling and could lead to damages on shipments dating back to April 2003. And while Motorola can ask for a ban on the shipping of Apple products to the country, it is unclear what the company's intention is. Motorola did say that it plans on defending its intellectual property while still making them available to end-users.

Of the two patents involved (EP 1010336 (B1) and EP 0847654 (B1)), Motorola has already said that one of them (U.S. Patent No. 6,359,898( is important when it comes to GSM, UMTS and 3G standards and the second patent is also likely to be valuable. Remember, Motorola was one of the tech firms involved in developing the cell phone and the company owns a boatload of patents which is what made the company so attractive to Google.

There has been some speculation that Applelost this case on purpose in order to appeal, but that sounds very unlike WWSD. Still, it was a default judgment-a mere technicality and not a judge's decision on the merits of the case- that earned Motorola the injunction. Simply put, Apple did not respond to Motorola's filing (perhaps on purpose?) which is why the courts ordered the injunction against them. Apple elaborated a bit more on the default judgment on Friday night by saying, "This is a procedural issue, and has nothing to do with the merits of the case. It does not affect our ability to sell products or do business in Germany at this time." Nonetheless, an injunction was granted which means Motorola may still have final say on which Apple products stay on the shelves in Germany and which ones will be blocked. While Motorola could do to Apple that which Apple has done to Samsung, Motorola CEO Sanjay Jha might consider it more punishing to Apple to relieve the company of some of its mountains of cash and let Motorola profit from Apple's popularity by licensing the patents involved.

source: SCRIBD via Engadget