Google’s Motorola Mobility unit has won a patent infringement case against its rival Microsoft in a German court, the latest in the series of ongoing dispute over patents between both the companies.
The regional court in Mannheim ruled that Motorola did not infringe a Microsoft patent which allows software applications to work with a phone’s radio antennas on different handsets.
Microsoft had ealier alleged that Motorola had violated patents related to software application programming interfaces (APIs) used to allow software developers to write a set of code to interface with different mobile devices’ radio antennas.
Microsoft associate general counsel David Howard said that this decision does not impact multiple injunctions the company has already been awarded and has enforced against Motorola products in Germany.
"It remains that Motorola is broadly infringing Microsoft’s intellectual property, and we hope it will join the vast majority of Android device makers by licensing Microsoft’s patents," Howard said.
Previously, Microsoft had won three patent cases against Motorola in Germany, banning some of Motorola’s phones from sale.
In February this year, Microsoft had asked EU antitrust regulators to intervene in a patent dispute with Google and Motorola, saying that Motorola is aggressively enforcing patent rights against rivals to stymie competition.
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In May this year, a German court in the southern city of Mannheim had ruled that Microsoft has infringed two Motorola Mobility patents, can no longer sell its products locally.
A German regional court in May 2012 ruled that Motorola’s Android-based devices infringed Microsoft’s patents relating to transmission of long text messages by displaying multiple SMS messages.
Recently, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, US had ruled that Motorola cannot enforce a patent injunction that it obtained on Xbox 360 ban against Microsoft in Germany.
