Microsoft Has No Mercy For Motorola

A German court has granted Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) the right to ask for an injunction against several Motorola Mobility products after ruling that the Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) unit was guilty of patent infringement.

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The ruling affects several of Motorola’s smartphones and tablets that, the court found, violate Microsoft’s patent for soft input panel system designed to help “mobile phone keyboards communicate with applications.” Microsoft now has the option to enforce the injunction in Germany and the U.S. in return for a security of 47.5 million euro or $61.4 million, the court said.

“We’re pleased this decision builds on previous rulings in Germany that have already found Motorola is broadly infringing Microsoft’s intellectual property,” David Howard, the corporate vice president and deputy general counsel at Microsoft, said in a statement. “We will continue to enforce injunctions against Motorola products in Germany and hope Motorola will join other Android device makers by taking a license to Microsoft’s patented inventions.”

In a statement, a Motorola spokeswoman said that they were “waiting for the written decision and … evaluating our options, including an appeal.”

In July, a German judge found in a separate case that Motorola’s devices infringed on a Microsoft-held File Allocation Table patent, while before that, in May, a Munich court ruled that Android-based Motorola devices infringe on a Microsoft messaging patent. In addition, the U.S. International Trade Commission ordered an import ban on Android-based Motorola devices that infringe on a Microsoft-held patent, though the Google unit later said it had come up with a workaround to address the issue.

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