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Motorola wins German ban on MS products

By Nadine Arendse
Johannesburg, 03 May 2012

Motorola wins German ban on MS products

Motorola has won a permanent injunction against the sale and marketing of Windows 7, the Xbox 360, Internet Explorer 7 and Windows Media Player in Germany, but Microsoft says the products will remain on sale while it launches an appeal, ZDNet reports.

The ruling, in Mannheim regional court, dealt with two Motorola patents that are essential to the widely-usedH.264 video compression technology. Both patents are supposed to be licensed under fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms, and a US court has pre-emptively granted Microsoft a restraining order against Motorola's enforcement of the German decision, while it examines Motorola's tactics around those patents.

Judge Holger Kircher said Microsoft breached an agreement with Motorola, which is in the process of being bought by Google, in using certain video-compression software in products including Windows 7 and Xbox, PC Pro notes.

The Mannheim case is related to the larger smartphone patent war being fought by Apple, Microsoft and mobile phone makers who use Google's Android software.

According to BBC, this is just one of several cases involving about 50 intellectual properties that the smartphone maker has claimed that Microsoft should have licensed.

Microsoft has said that if it met all of Motorola's demands it would face an annual bill of $4 billion. Motorola disputes the figure.

A statement from Motorola said: "We are pleased that the Mannheim Court found that Microsoft products infringe Motorola Mobility's intellectual property. As a path forward, we remain open to resolving this matter. Fair compensation is all that we have been seeking for our intellectual property."

Microsoft said it planned to appeal the German ruling.

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