Motorola Says Top Microsoft Products Infringe Patents - PC Magazine

On Wednesday, Motorola fired back against Microsoft, suing the software giant for patent infringement that the suit claims involves a number of key Microsoft products.

Motorola filed separate suits in both the Southern District of Florida as well as the Western District of Wisconsin, alleging that Microsoft's products infringed at least six of Motorola's patents. (Copies of the Wisconsin suit were not immediately available, as the court's Web site was down for maintenance.)

Microsoft said it was reviewing the suit. "We are still reviewing Motorola's filing, which we just received," said Horacio Gutierrez, corporate vice president and deputy general counsel of Intellectual Property and Licensing at Microsoft, in a statement. "This move is typical of the litigation process and we are not surprised. We remain confident in our position and will continue to move forward with the complaints we initiated against Motorola in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington and with the International Trade Commission (ITC)."

The Florida suit, however, claims that Microsoft's Windows operating systems, including Windows 7 and Windows Phone 7, plus Microsoft's Bing, Windows Live Messaging, and even the Xbox game console all violate Motorola's patents.

Motorola also challenged Microsoft's use of Wi-Fi and digital video encoding patents, two topics that are at issue in Microsoft's own suit against Motorola, which argued that Motorola was obligated to provide so-called Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory licensing terms to Microsoft, as per a trade industry group's bylaws. In early October, Microsoft also sued Motorola, claiming that Motorola's Android phones violated certain Microsoft patents.

"Motorola's R&D and intellectual property are of great importance to the Company and are renowned worldwide," Kirk Dailey, corporate vice president of intellectual property at Motorola Mobility, said in a statement. "We are committed to protecting the interests of our shareholders, customers and other stakeholders and are bringing this action against Microsoft in order to halt its infringement of key Motorola patents. Motorola has invested billions of dollars in R&D to create a deep and broad intellectual property portfolio and we will continue to do what is necessary to protect our proprietary technology."

Editor's Note: This story was updated at 11:16 AM PT with comments from Microsoft.

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Apple sues Motorola: A look at the complaints - CNET

mollywood: Hey, wow, misty drizzle. Good show. Really moody. But I've got like 20 kids coming over to carve pumpkins on the deck today. So cool it, ok?

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Apple Taps Multi-Touch in Motorola Patent Lawsuits - PC World

Apple's patent lawsuit against Motorola is just another thread in a rather complicated litigation web, but it's also unique for busting out multi-touch, a hallmark feature of modern smartphones.

In total, Apple is wielding six patents across two lawsuits against Motorola, as detailed on Patently Apple. The lawsuit is a counter-attack against Motorola, which in October claimed that Apple infringes upon 20 of its patents, so 26 patents are actually in play.

But the two patents that raised my non-lawyer eyebrows are the following:

Ellipse Fitting for Multi-Touch Surfaces: "Apparatus and methods are disclosed for simultaneously tracking multiple finger and palm contacts as hands approach, touch, and slide across a proximity-sensing, multi-touch surface. Identification and classification of intuitive hand configurations and motions enables unprecedented integration of typing, resting, pointing, scrolling, 3D manipulation, and handwriting into a versatile, ergonomic computer input device."

Multipoint Touchscreen: "A touch panel having a transparent capacitive sensing medium configured to detect multiple touches or near touches that occur at the same time and at distinct locations in the plane of the touch panel and to produce distinct signals representative of the location of the touches on the plane of the touch panel for each of the multiple touches is disclosed."

You don't have to be a master of legal jargon to see that both patents involve touching a screen with multiple fingers at the same time. Apple has never used these patents for lawsuits before, and from what I can tell, Apple's lawsuits against other smartphone manufacturers, such as HTC and Nokia, don't specifically target multi-touch.

The closest Apple has come in the past is with "Touch screen device, method, and graphical user interface for determining commands by applying heuristics," applied against both HTC and Nokia. This was once regarded as Apple's key multi-touch patent, but as Engadget's Nilay Patel points out in January 2009, there's really nothing multi-touch about it. The patent simply covers the way an iPhone can tell if you want to scroll up and down only, or side-to-side as well, based on the angle your finger hits the screen.

This seems kind of crazy now, but there was a time when other smartphones didn't use multi-touch. After Palm broke the mold with the Pre, and didn't get sued, Android followed, and multi-touch is now a standard smartphone feature. According to one rumor, Google had a gentleman's agreement with Apple not to use multi-touch in Android, as part of a fragile partnership between the two companies. Apple and Google are now bitter smartphone rivals, so the agreement has presumably fallen apart.

Apple won't attack Google directly in court, so for now Motorola's taking the blame for allegedly using one of the iPhone's most important features. The implications would appear to be huge, but as with all the other patent lawsuits in play, this one's not going to be resolved anytime soon.

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Motorola Sues Apple, Seeks to Block iPhone, iPad Sales - PC Magazine

Motorola has sued Apple for patent infringement in the latest round of suits that involve mobile technology.

Motorola Mobility sued Apple in three separate complaints; in district courts in Illinois and Florida and a separate complaint filed with the U.S. International Trade Commission. The suits cover 18 different patents, and they allege that Apple's iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, and certain Mac computers infringe them.

The Motorola patents include wireless communication technologies, such as WCDMA (3G), GPRS, 802.11 and antenna design, and key smartphone technologies including wireless e-mail, proximity sensing, software application management, location-based services and multi-device synchronization, Motorola said. The ITC complaint asks the court to block the import of Apple's allegedly infringing products.

"Motorola has innovated and patented throughout every cycle of the telecommunications industry evolution, from Motorola's invention of the cell phone to its development of premier smartphone products," Kirk Dailey, corporate vice president of intellectual property at Motorola Mobility, said in a statement. "We have extensively licensed our industry-leading intellectual property portfolio, consisting of tens of thousands of patents in the U.S. and worldwide. After Apple's late entry into the telecommunications market, we engaged in lengthy negotiations, but Apple has refused to take a license. We had no choice but to file these complaints to halt Apple's continued infringement. Motorola will continue to take all necessary steps to protect its R&D and intellectual property, which are critical to the company's business."

A copy of the suit was not immediately available. Representatives from Apple were unavailable to comment.

Apple has sued HTC over phone technology, including trying to block several Android phones. Meanwhile, Microsoft has sued Motorola, also concerning mobile patents.

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Droid Pro, Citrus Join Motorola Android Lineup - eWeek

Motorola introduced two new Android-running smartphones for the Verizon Wireless network Oct. 5. The Droid Pro, the first Android phone specifically for business users, will arrive in the coming weeks, while the Citrus, an entry-level consumer handset, will arrive later in the quarter.

Motorola introduced the phones at the CTIA Wireless trade show in San Francisco, the same day that AT&T announced it will soon be offering three new Motorola handsets, the Flipout, the Bravo and the Flipside, which run Android 2.1 and the latest version of Motorola's user interface, Motoblur.

Motorola's big Android push comes as its executives prepare to separate its handset business from the rest of the company, a move first announced in 2008. At the CTIA event, Motorola CEO Sanjay Jha said the spinoff was "looking good for the first quarter, the early part of the first quarter," Bloomberg reported in Business Week Oct. 6. Jha added that the growing popularity of Android handsets was creating an innovation race.

"It's a good thing for consumers and for carriers," Jha said, according to Bloomberg.

If most Android handsets are designed to compete with the Apple iPhone, the Droid Pro is a more direct threat to Research In Motion's BlackBerry smartphones. The Motorola device features a 3.1-inch multitouch display, a four-row QWERTY keypad, a full HTML browser with Adobe Flash Player 10.1, the Android 2.2 operating system, a 1GHz processor and 4GB of memory.

A global phone, it offers data coverage in more than 200 countries, and in addition to 3G offers WiFi-enabled DNLA (Digital Living Network Alliance) connectivity. With the enterprise in mind, it features support for Gmail and Exchange e-mail, comes preloaded with the Quickoffice Mobile Suite, and allows the user to view, edit and share Microsoft documents. Security features include AuthenTec IPSec multiheaded VPN integration with remote-wipe capabilities and complex password support. Encryption for SD cards will be available in 2011.

The Droid Pro also contains a 5-megapixel camera, and can act as a Verizon 3G Mobile Hotspot for up to five other WiFi-enabled devices.

"The Droid Pro is an advanced business-ready solution that provides users with the full smartphone experience, redefined by delivering the power of a Droid," Jha said in a statement. "The Droid Pro consolidates users' work and personal needs. This is just another reason the Droid Pro is setting a new standard for [the] enterprise, allowing users to enjoy all the benefits of a smartphone with full push delivery of corporate e-mail and corporate-level security."

The consumer-geared Citrus runs Android 2.1 and relies on an on-screen QWERTY keypad. However, the full-capacitive touch screen offers flick, swipe and pinch-to-zoom navigation, and on the back of the phone is a touch panel, called BackTrack, that offers the alternate option of navigating without obstructing the display?which seems ideal for showing off photos.

Citrus' seven home screen panels can be customized with applications and widgets, and the device comes preloaded with Microsoft's Bing Search and Bing Maps, in addition to Google services such as Google Talk and Gmail. To boot, it's made of 25 percent post-consumer recycled plastic and arrives in 80-percent post-consumer recycled packaging.

Motorola also introduced the Android-running Spice smartphone, announced without a carrier partner. Another lower-cost, entry-level handset, it features a touch screen with multitouch support, BackTrack on the flip side and Motorola's Flashback application, which lets users view and manage all their content from a single application.

Motorola did not give prices for the phones, saying such details would arrive closer to the handsets' launch dates.

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Microsoft: Open To Collaboration With Motorola On Windows Phone 7 - Wall Street Journal

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See a sample reprint in PDF format.Order a reprint of this article nowOCTOBER 6, 2010, 6:12 A.M. ETMicrosoft: Open To Collaboration With Motorola On Windows Phone 7 ArticleCommentsmore in Business »

COLOGNE (Dow Jones)--Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) is open to collaborating with Motorola Inc. (MOT) on Windows Phone 7, Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer said Wednesday at a ...

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