Microsoft has filed a complaint with the eu Commission against Google's Motorola Mobility within the latest salvo in an increasingly bitter patent war between technology giants.
Apple, that is embroiled in a multi-continent patent fight with South Korea's Samsung, lodged the same complaint against Motorola Mobility with European competition regulators last week.
Both Microsoft and Apple accuse Motorola Mobility, that's being acquired by Google for US$12.5 billion, of unfairly using its patent portfolio to check out to dam competing products.
At issue are what are often called standard essential patents. SEPs are patents which were identified by technology companies as essential to let them build compatible products.
Motorola Mobility is failing to live as much as an industry pledge to license SEPs to rivals on fair, reasonable and nondiscriminatory terms, consistent with Microsoft and Apple.
"Motorola is trying to dam sales of Windows PCs, our Xbox game console and other products," Microsoft deputy general counsel Dave Heiner said, explaining the software giant's decision to file a complaint with the EC.
"Motorola is demanding that Microsoft take its products off the market, in any other case remove their standards-based ability to play video and fasten wirelessly," Heiner said in a blog post.
"(Motorola) is on a route to use standard essential patents to kill video on the net, and Google as its new owner doesn't look willing to modify course," he said.
A Google spokeswoman dismissed Microsoft's complaint as "another example in their attempts to make use of the regulatory process to attack competitors.
"It's particularly ironic given their track record during this area and collaboration with patent trolls," the spokeswoman said.
US and European regulators gave the fairway light last week to Google's acquisition of Motorola Mobility.
Google, whose Android software is utilized by smartphone and tablet computer makers, acquired 17,000 patents with the acquisition of the Illinois-based maker of cellphones, tablet computers and tv set-top boxes.
Announcing the purchase in August, Google chief executive Larry Page said it would "enable us to raised protect Android from anti-competitive threats from Microsoft, Apple and other companies."
The usa Justice Department's antitrust division, in approving the Google-Motorola Mobility deal, said Google, Apple and Microsoft had made commitments concerning their SEP licensing policies.
"The division's concerns concerning the potential anticompetitive use of SEPs was lessened by the clear commitments by Apple and Microsoft to license SEPs on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory terms," it said.
Google's commitments, however, "were more ambiguous and don't provide an identical direct confirmation of its SEP licensing policies," the dep. said.
Heiner said Motorola Mobility "has refused to make its patents available at anything remotely on the subject of a cheap price."
"For a US$1,000 laptop, Motorola is demanding that Microsoft pay a royalty of $22.50 for its 50 patents at the video standard," he said, while a set of 29 companies was making 2,300 other patents available for just two cents.
"If every firm priced its standard essential patents like Motorola, the price of the patents will be more than all of the other costs combined in making PCs, tablets, smartphones and other devices," Heiner said.
Microsoft was not using SEPs in an try to block smartphones or tablets running Android, Heiner said, and he appealed to Google to alter course.
"For an organization so publicly committed to protecting the net, one might expect them to enroll in the growing consensus against using standard essential patents to dam products," he said.
Patent analyst Florian Mueller said on his FOSS Patents blog he expected the eu Commission to "make a determination at the launch of full-blown investigations within a number of months."
Mueller added that "if every owner of normal-essential patents behaved like Motorola, this industry will be in chaos, and grind to a halt.
"i do not dispute any company's right to defend its intellectual property vigorously, but if standard essential patents are involved, there should be clear limits."
- AFP
By Chris Lefkow
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