Motorola wants 2.25% of Apple’s sales in return for license to standard-essential wireless patents, according to a report at “FOSS Patents” (http://macte.ch/bCw0J).
“I assume this relates to Apple’s sales and to all of MMI’s standard-essential patents, though the context is only one patent (the one over which Motorola has already forced Apple, temporarily, to remove certain products from its German online store,” Florian Mueller writes for “FOSS Patents.” “Assuming in Motorola’s favor that this was a license to all standard-essential wireless patents, the amount still appears excessive to me given how many companies hold patents on such standards and what royalty rate this would lead to in the aggregate.”
Last month the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) ruled that Motorola’s Droid smartphones don’t violate three Apple patents. The ruling is preliminary and needs to be approved by the ITC’s full six-member commission.
Apple has previously alleged that Motorola infringes 24 of its patents (21 of them with Android-based phones, the remaining three with set-top boxes and DVRs), while Motorola previously asserted 18 patents against a variety of Apple products (mostly but not exclusively iPhone, iPad and iPod). Litigation between the two companies has taken place in several different federal courts — primarily the Western District of Wisconsin and the Southern District of Florida — as well as before the ITIC.
In November 2010 Apple sued Motorola, alleging that the company’s smartphone lineup and the operating software it uses infringe on the iPhone-maker’s intellectual property. The two lawsuits came after Motorola sued Apple in October 2010 for patent infringement. Motorola claims that Apple’s iPhone, iPad, iPod touch and certain Mac computers infringe Motorola patents.
