US Court Says Motorola Can't Enforce Microsoft Injunction In Germany 175
First time accepted submitter Chris453 writes "A U.S. appeals court on Friday ruled that Google Inc's Motorola Mobility unit cannot enforce a patent injunction that it obtained against Microsoft Corp in Germany, diminishing Google's leverage in the ongoing smartphone patent wars. Motorola won an injunction against Microsoft in May using their H.264 patents. Apparently the U.S. federal justices in California have worldwide jurisdiction over all court cases — Who knew? Maybe that is why Apple keeps winning lawsuits..."
Good start (Score:3)
Now you only only have to ban your other thousand companies from using software patents in Europe, and we will be very thankful.
Yet Another Misleading Story (Score:4, Informative)
IANAL (Score:2)
An injunction is a court order instructing a party to do or not do something. Injunctions are enforced via threat of more legal action. In this context:
Microsoft sued Motorola Mobility / Google in the US in 2010 to enforce MM's licensing promise on a worldwide basis.
Motorola Mobility / Google sued Microsoft in Germany eight months later.
The German court granted an injunction in the German case to stop Microsoft from selling Xboxen and Windows in Germany while the court decides if Microsoft is violating Goog
Re:How does this work? (Score:5, Informative)
You could try reading the article.
"At bottom, this case is a private dispute under Washington state contract law between two U.S. corporations," the court ruled.
Dangerous precedent (Score:5, Insightful)
The legal drinking age in Germany is 14 (for undistilled drinks given by a parent or guardian). By this court's reasoning, if a family went on vacation in Germany for Octoberfest and dad gave his 14 yo son a beer to drink, then it's a Washington State parent giving alcohol to an underage Washington State child, and he would be subject to fines and jail under the drinking laws of Washington State.
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The US, UK and now many other common law countries actually do claim universal jurisdiction for a few select laws, most notably extraterritorial child sex tourism laws. You can murder someone in another country and you have to be prosecuted there, you can't be extradited home to be tried somewhere you didn't commit the crime. But so much as touch a child's genitals and you can be tried there *or* extradited home to face a court under extraterritorial laws, whatever the officials feel like doing on both sides.
Another example of U.S. extraterritorial laws deals with Cuban cigars. If you're an american, you can't smoke a Cuban, even in another country. The penalties for an individual -- you can get fined up to $250k and spend 10 years in prison.
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Add the use of narcotics in countries where it is legal.
Hmm, I'm noticing a theme with these laws where the US extends jurisdiction over the citizenry when it comes to substances ingested (injected, whatever)? Perhaps the ultimate irony in this is that there is no universal health care that would give the US a monetary interest in same.
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You write it up as if it were somehow ridiculous and beyond the realm of the possible. But I wouldn't put it past a US court at all. 'Child endangerment' an' all that.
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Re:Dangerous precedent (Score:5, Informative)
By this court's reasoning, if a family went on vacation in Germany for Octoberfest and dad gave his 14 yo son a beer to drink, then it's a Washington State parent giving alcohol to an underage Washington State child, and he would be subject to fines and jail under the drinking laws of Washington State.
No. It's more like father and mother get divorced in Washington state. As part of the custody agreement, the father agrees not to provide beer to their son. The father and son go to Germany and the father buys the son a beer. The Washington state divorce court declares him in violation of the Washington state custody agreement. It's not illegal; it's just a contract violation.
If Google and Microsoft have a contract in Washington state, then US courts will have jurisdiction over that contract. This isn't overturning the German decision. The German decision presumably says that Motorola Mobility has a patent and that Microsoft must license the patent from them. The US court decision apparently says that Google (which owns Motorola Mobility) has a licensing agreement with Microsoft. As a result of that licensing agreement, Microsoft has licensed this patent from Google. This is in fact a US contract dispute and should be decided under US law.
The confusing part here seems to be that there are two separate issues. One should be decided under German law. That's whether the patent applies and requires licensing. The other should be decided under US law. That's the question of whether the licensing agreement applies. Germany decided that the patent does apply and the US decided that the licensing agreement applies. This is confusing, but there's nothing wrong with it. Absent an international patent system, this is the way that these things will work.
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Well, the question is if it applies to Europe, the license and/or patent. Because patents are quite often differently interpreted even by different US courts, and certainly differently in Europe.
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And no one speaks out against this extraterritorial enforcement of American laws where local laws aren't broken, because hey, it's just for child molesters, right? Oh, and terrorists. They'd never expand it b
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So what's extraterritorial about it? US court arrests a US citizen on US soil for breaki
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It is funny though, how in the next breath the federal government claims that the Constitution doesn't apply on a U.S. military base in Cuba even when the orders come from Washington DC.
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"So what's extraterritorial about it? US court arrests a US citizen on US soil for breaking a US law. It doesn't get much more domestic than that."
How about the law was broken in a different jurisdiction where it isn't illegal. The act was committed on foreign soil where US law has no authority. By doing so you essentially have an ex-post facto situation where you are being arrested for something that isn't illegal where it's done or when it's done. Then comes the real fun, what happens when
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How about the law was broken in a different jurisdiction where it isn't illegal.
The important fact is actually: The law was broken in a different jurisdiction. US authorities won't prosecute anyone for giving a fourteen year old beer in Germany. They won't even prosecute anyone for murdering someone in Germany. If an American couple goes on holiday to Germany, and one of them murders the other in Germany, US police will not prosecute the murderer. They will of course extradite that murderer to Germany where he or she would be prosecuted.
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IANAL, however, it was my understanding that you are incorrect. It is only illegal and trial worthy in the US, *IF* the sole (or was it primary) reason for the trip was to have sex with kids under (some age).
If you were on a business trip (with no prior knowledge or intention of doing anything), and on that trip you did, it wouldn't be prosecutable, but I could be wrong. I suspect the same is true with Cuban cigars.
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Subsection (c) of the same law criminalizes the conduct itself, with the same penalty (up to 30 years) and does not require that to be the purpose of the trip.
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Thanks for the correction. Learn something every day.
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The legal drinking age in Germany is 14 (for undistilled drinks given by a parent or guardian). By this court's reasoning, if a family went on vacation in Germany for Octoberfest and dad gave his 14 yo son a beer to drink, then it's a Washington State parent giving alcohol to an underage Washington State child, and he would be subject to fines and jail under the drinking laws of Washington State.
No, it's more like one parent sued the other over drinking, then went to a foreign court to get a verdict they like. The US court says "Stop, you started the fight here and are US companies so we will decide the outcome; if you try to enforce your rights under the foreign decision we will be pissed." You don't want to piss of a US judge if you fall under their jurisdiction.
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How would this then have applied to the Apple/Samsung fight? If I remember it correctly, Apple started the fight in Europe, right? So, by the reasoning above, the fight should have finished in Europe, and not in California, correct?
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No, it's more complicated. Shops and pubs are not allowed to give brandy and brandy containing drinks to people under 18 (9 JuSchG 1(1)) in general, and other alcoholic drinks to people under 16, if not accompagnied by adults (9 1(2)). It is possible to serve non-brandy-alcohol to people under 16, if they are accompagnied by adults, whose responsibility it is to decide if underage persons should drink alcohol.
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And how does that in any way contradict me, or how did I mess something up? Pray tell!
I just said, that in general, there is no "drinking age" comparable to the U.S., but there are several age limits which are i) valid only to shopowners and pub landlords ii) heavily depending on the type of alcoholic beverage and food (yes, it covers also brandy containing food like certain chocolate candies) and iii) the circumstances they get sold.
The simple statement, that the legal drinking age in Germany would be 14 i
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Well, and then something like this happens, that the other country makes it a crime to follow the extraterritorial laws for the first country.
http:/// [http] eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:31996R2271:EN:HTML
Now you are fucked no matter what you do. Basically discriminating against some because he is Cuban is illegal, potentially criminal, inside the EU, and trying to enforce the US Cuba embargo just does not happens in the EU, actually most US-owned banks in Europe declare to be happy to do b
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>so how do you draw a map that needs to fulfill multiple incompatible claims?
Yeah, it's a case of states gone crazy. The sole reasoning for anything a state does anymore is simply continuation and expansion of the power of that state. Nothing to do with people actually want or need.
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Of course they can. Countries are (mostly) sovereign, meaning they can pass any law they want, covering anyone, anywhere. The only limitation is the practicality of enforcing such laws (including, traditionally, the various wars that spring up when country A tries to assert control over part of country B). While this can cause problems with natural people (as the US has found with Assange; they can't really enforce their laws against him unless they can get hold of him, and they can't do that without breaki
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Well, the interesting part is how much owners of company with legal person status (GmbH/AG) may influence the officers of the company before it becomes legally awkward/criminal.
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And prepare to pay heavy fines if you do not fulfill your local obligations, the way US courts behave, many local judges are quite pissed. (E.g. the US court tends not to comply with requests for legal help, but expects the local peons to supply all the stuff pronto.
E.g. the US does not follow court orders concerning giving evidence to the defense in the NZ Mega DotCom case.
The US also has this "funny" notation that it's agents abroad are above the law, e.g. see the verdicts against CIA agents in Italy, som
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"Hello Mr President. We have a warrant for your arrest here. Please follow these men.".
Sovereigns and assorted world leaders have highest dilomatic immunity possible, well over ambassadors. Arresting Obama, say, for murder, even if the arresting country had a roomful of witnesses and a gun with his finger prints, would be treated as a declaration of war. Not happening. Worst case he'd be kicked out of the country and formal protests lodged, perhaps expellation of the US ambassador.
Re:How does this work? (Score:5, Insightful)
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He may be more like a pawn.
Re:How does this work? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's a private dispute between Motorola (and hence Google) and Microsoft. But it's a cross-jurisdictional one, with lawsuits being filed all over the place (as with the Apple v Samsung fight). Yes, some of the cases involve various subsidiaries, including national branches, but there is enough cross-over between the cases that is isn't an issue, and both sides seem to have agreed that they were the same parties involved in both cases.
From footnote 7, page 10 of the US Court of Appeal's judgment [uscourts.gov]:
For more details, see the argument in IV A, starting at page 18. Basically, the parties agreed that they were the same.
Also, as a Court of Appeal case, there were three judges involved, not just one, and just because someone gives a ruling you disagree with (perhaps based on factual misunderstandings), that doesn't make them morons.
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World over, you can sue an entity in a court if that court has jurisdiction over that entity (and the relevant issue). Whether or not that court has jurisdiction is a matter for that court's procedures, and the laws which govern it. The ability to enforce a judgment is entirely different to whether or not that judgment can be made (although in some cases a court could refuse to hear a claim if it is likely to be unenforceable).
While I agree that the US often appears to overreach its jurisdiction, in this ca
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Which bits were you thinking of? The unofficial agreements that ships are under the jurisdiction of the country of their flag (that is, allowing a country to extend its reach beyond its borders) or the stuff about universal jurisdiction over certain crimes (again, allowing countries to extend their reach outside their traditional borders, potentially leading to multi-jurisdiction liabilities and conflicts). Or were you refer
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Do you have a source for any of that?
Because I have a source contradicting it. A quick check through recent reported case decisions of the English courts includes this case [bailii.org], dated 5th September, where the defendant is a US company [wikipedia.org], and also this one [bailii.org] where the claimant is a US company, dated 31st July. And that was just a quick search for "Inc" (which is a US abbreviation; the UK equivalents are Ltd or plc., or their Welsh translations).
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Motorola Germany.
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Except they're doing business in other countries, and subject to the laws there. They're international entities.
I'd like to see the US court try to inform the German court they don't have jurisdiction.
My guess is that wouldn't get very far.
Re:How does this work? (Score:4, Informative)
A US court can, however, tell a US corporation whether it can seek to enforce an injunction granted in another jurisdiction.
The court isn't telling Germany to do or not do anything. They're telling Motorola that they cannot seek to have the injunction enforced because of an ongoing lawsuit over whether Motorola acted improperly regarding the fees they requested for the standards-essential patent(s) at issue.
Re:How does this work? (Score:5, Interesting)
It really doesnt matter if its a US corporation. If its operating in Germany, then its operations in germany are under German juristiction no ifs no buts.
We've had a few instances here in australia where a US court "overrules" an australian one from having juristiction. The australian court, naturally, systematically ignores it. Those clauses of "All disagreements must be heard in x state" you see in american contracts have no validity here. To quote a lawyer friend, "Us lawyers dont actually get to invent laws or nullify them with our contracts, no matter how clever we think we are".
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The difference is, the Australian court system will generally not hear cases between two American companies while a similar action is ongoing in their home country. They will also generally uphold the American ruling, unless it conflicts with Australian statutory law or legal principles.
Australia is a common law jurisdiction, although rulings from other common law jurisdictions is not binding precedent, it is certainly given a huge amount of respect. Germany uses a civil law system and does not consider its
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No, its operations are subject to both jurisdictions.
There have been certain countries with no laws against bribery. US companies operating in those jurisdictions were still absolutely required to abide by the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
This is why multinational operations are so complex. They must abide by multiple sets of rules at the same time. Some of those conflict. This is not a new development.
So yes, while there are many, many contradictory regulations that do not need to be abided by in certain
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It really doesnt matter if its a US corporation. If its operating in Germany, then its operations in germany are under German juristiction no ifs no buts.
We've had a few instances here in australia where a US court "overrules" an australian one from having juristiction. The australian court, naturally, systematically ignores it. Those clauses of "All disagreements must be heard in x state" you see in american contracts have no validity here. To quote a lawyer friend, "Us lawyers dont actually get to invent laws or nullify them with our contracts, no matter how clever we think we are".
How is this insightful? It's blatantly ignorant of US Contract Law.
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Can a German court tell a US corporation not to do something or another in the US?
Can a US court tell British Petroleum to do or not do something in Nigeria?
Can a US court tell a Korean corp to do or not do something in Europe?
Can a Korean court tell a California corporation to knock it off?
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:How does this work? (Score:5, Informative)
They're not doing an end run around the court. If, according to German law, Motorola is in the right, then they have the right to enjoin (in Germany).
Many companies have to do a lot of things in foreign jurisdictions because of European (or other) laws. It's out of line for a US court to say that they can't do so because a case in a US court.
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There's an additional layer of subtlety in that if MS's claim is correct (and they win their case), one of the possible remedies the US court could order is that Motorola retroactively licenses their patents to MS at a FRAND rate. If that happens, then MS won't have infringed Motorola's patents in Germany (because they would have been licensed) and so the German injunction (which is only an interim one, iirc) would be wrongly granted, and Motorola would have to compensate MS (probably to the tune of hundred
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Apparently AC's don't understand the word or concept of "retroactively".
No, thats like saying you can a conviction for driving without a license after you've been found guilty if you get a license at a later date.
Actually, you can have a case thrown out for driving without a license, if you file to have a case that caused you to lose your license and have it overturned or changed to a supervision -- in the US. I can't claim anything in other countries.
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All of those things are correct except the last part.
The US has the authority, as a sovereign nation, to require whatever of corporations constituted within its jurisdiction. When a corporation is subject to multiple, contradictory jurisdictions, it then must choose a course of action and accept the consequences of that action. Not all consequences are pretty.
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What you say is a truism, in that a judge (or the government) could do whatever they really want.
However, it doesn't make it fair or even prudent.
California has very strict standards for pollution. But they only apply them within their borders. They don't say to a company that you can only operate in CA if you keep to the CA standards all across the world.
Ordering somebody to do something within your jurisdiction seems correct to the ordinary person. Similarly, ordering it worldwide seems an overreach. The
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They're not doing an end run around the court. If, according to German law, Motorola is in the right, then they have the right to enjoin (in Germany).
Many companies have to do a lot of things in foreign jurisdictions because of European (or other) laws. It's out of line for a US court to say that they can't do so because a case in a US court.
I don't give a flyin' fuck if it is in Germany. The US Corporation is under US Laws, and the accompany local laws, but never do those foreign laws supersede US Federal Laws when it concerns a US Corporation. What do you not get? Contract Law is not Patent Law and Motorola Mobility [Google] is fucking wrong.
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And how is that not the equivalent of claiming global jurisdiction? If you operate in territories A and B and a court with jurisdiction A wants to punish you for something you did in jurisdiction B, then that's effectively claiming jurisdiction. Particularly when it comes to fines you can nullify any foreign law, if Microsoft owes Motorola $100M in Germany and the US court gives $100M back then you're de facto rewriting German law, as long as both are big multinationals with no other choice than to have a U
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Yeah, how would it go over if a Korean court awarded Samsung $1 billion to make up for the case against Apple in California?
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Yeah, how would it go over if a Korean court awarded Samsung $1 billion to make up for the case against Apple in California?
And the US Military could pull all resources out of South Korea, wash it's hands with diplomatic relations and North Korea could waltz in while Samsung shats itself all over its IP assets. When a US Company attempts to subvert US Law, even in a foreign nation, it runs the risk of being shut down. Get it?
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Glad the fact of Korea being nothing more than a satrapy is cleared up.
I take it that US court opinions won't be bothered with in China and India, not being dependent on the US for their defense.
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Global jurisdiction would imply that jurisdiction C can claim jurisdiction, and you don't operate there at all. The US Constitution doesn't allow that, and even the international criminal court (probably as close to global jurisdiction as it gets) is technically complementary jurisdiction IIRC, since countries still have jurisdiction to try their own war criminals--the ICC only does it if they don't. And it generally only applies to countries which are party to the Rome Statute, so they've consented.
If it
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No-one can tell British Petroleum to do anything because there's no such company any more: it changed its name to BP PLC in 2001, after briefly being BP Amoco PLC from 2000.
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Because god forbid a corporation allow anyone to infer from their name they are subordinate or owe allegiance to any particular national government any more. The scale has tipped. The corporations now tell the governments what to do. Let the bribing and arm twisting of the courts begin.
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Therein lies a tale. BP used to be British Petroleum used to be the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, believe it or not.
It started out as the Anglo-Persian Oil company when a millionaire Londoner negotiated a concession with the Shah of Iran.
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No. You can't tell something that doesn't exist to do anything.
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Can a EU commission base a fine on sales made outside it's jurisdiction?
Apparently.
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Yes, to all of the above.
The question then comes whether they ignore the order and face the consequences in the jurisdiction whose judicial system they are ignoring.
Welcome to the world of operating in multiple national jurisdictions.
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Well, yes, the question is basically if it's legal from a German point of view, e.g. there are limits how much share owners can dictate behavior to officers of a GmbH or AG (where the companies are basically legal persons, and the officers of the company are kind of guardians for it).
For example the EU does have explicit laws that criminalize applying Helms-Burton inside Europe, the usual way is that the OFAC gives exceptions for US-owned EU companies.
So I guess Motorola could probably construct it in such
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I call bullshit and spit on the US court. Thought police come arrest me.
Re:How does this work? (Score:5, Interesting)
So Motorola should go to the Mannheim court where it got the injunction and file a "contempt of court" motion against Microsoft for trying to circumvent the injunction without following proper procedure (filing a motion to lift the injunction in the proper courts in Germany). It won't help Motorola directly, but Microsoft might get some hefty fine for it.
Re:How does this work? (Score:5, Funny)
You see, you're sleeping over at a friends place - and your friend's mum said that you could have coke with your dinner even though your mum said you couldn't.
You can "forget" what your mum told you and have the coke anyway, you won't get in trouble at your friends house.
But you're sure gonna get it when you get home and your mum finds out. I mean, you could lie but...
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But in this case it's more like the mum of your friend says "no coke in my house" and your mum says "don't care about what she says, I allow you to drink coke there, that's all that counts."
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yeah.. except in this case, "coke" was the injunction, not Microsoft's use of H.264
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It's not a PATENT dispute at the core, it's a CONTRACT dispute, and Morotola sued about the breach in the US. International contract law is a huge, complicated area, so I'm going to have to assume a Federal judge knows more about the field than a bunch of armchair contract lawyers on slashdot - especially when both of the countries who entered into the contract are American, making the jurisdiction pretty obvious.
Here's a starting point if you really care... http://www.uncitral.org/uncitral/en/uncitral_tex [uncitral.org]
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Motorola sued Microsoft in a Washington state court. For an RTFA Troll, you really didn't RTFA (or even if you did, you still want to play armchair lawyer...)
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No, I'm suggesting if you really care about it you can go read up on international contract law and the various agreements and treaties signed between different countries. I don't pretend to have read that many details of it, but I also don't pretend I somehow know more than the judges and legal experts who *have*.
My newsletter has been suspended indefinitely, as the UN has a much better one that can be found at uncitral.org [uncitral.org]
And as the article said, the US court wasn't telling German courts to do anything,
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Excuse me for not living in the EU, and finding that the EU can levy fines based on sales outside it's jurisdiction, and based on sales of parent companies that have no assets or does business within the EU. See EU VS Microsoft.
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If found guilty of breaching EU rules, it could be penalised up to $7.4 billion or 10 percent of its global revenues for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2012.
Doesn't sound like it's the sales in the EU, unless there is a new definition of "global".
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How does it work?
Drone strikes!
Re:How does this work? (Score:5, Interesting)
tl;dr; they're not. Under German law, injunctions are enforced by the party, not the court. The US court has ordered that Motorola not enforce it until they've come to a conclusion in their case (which could affect the German court decision).
Long version, based on the CoA's judgment, available here [uscourts.gov]:
Motorola claims to have patents in various jurisdictions covering vital steps of the H.264 video compression standard. When the ITU established H.264 as a standard, Motorola had to agree to license all relevant patents at RAND (reasonable and non-discriminatory) rates.
Back in 2010, Motorola asked Microsoft to licence its H.264 patents (for use in the various Windows and X-Box software) at what MS described as an unreasonable royalty rate. MS sued Motorola for breach of contract, on the grounds that Motorola's agreement with the ITU was a contract, which gave MS third-party benefits (and thus the right to sue to enforce it). [Third-party contract rights are an interesting area of law; some jurisdictions have them (e.g. the US), in some they are optional (e.g. England+Wales) and in others they don't exist (e.g. Germany).] Motorola responded by suing for patent infringement, and the cases were combined.
In 2011, while the US contract/patent case was going on, Motorola then filed a claim against MS for patent infringement in Germany, specifically for the two H.264 patents. As part of their claim, Motorola wanted an injunction banning the sale of Windows and X-Boxes in Germany. In May 2012, the German Court found in favour of Motorola and granted the injunction. However, as noted in the US CoA's judgment:
Under German law, if a party is given an injunction, they get to decide whether or not to enforce it, and if they do and it is subsequently overturned, they have to pay the other side damages to cover any losses.
So the question before the US CoA was whether or not the US courts could issue their own injunction ordering that Motorola not enforce the German injunction (Motorola, being a US-based company, is obviously within the court's jurisdiction). The District Court said they could, and the Court of Appeal have confirmed this. Their reasoning seems to be that *if* Motorola was in breach of contract by not licensing its patents to MS at RAND rates, then one remedy for MS would be a compulsory licence at such a rate. But such a licence would necessarily include *all* of Motorola's relevant patents, including the German ones. Thus MS would no longer be committing patent infringement in Germany, and the German injunction would be wrongly granted.
The US CoA's options were: allow Motorola to enforce the German injunction, and if the injunction were overturned (due to US rulings on the contract), Motorola would have to pay MS to compensate for any losses, *or* block Motorola from enforcing the German injunction and, if the injunction was not overturned (due to the US ruling), MS would have to pay Motorola to compensate for the losses.
The CoA seems to have sided with MS rather than Motorola, possibly because they felt Motorola had been a bit vexatious by suing in Germany while the US case was happening (it comes across as them trying to "forum shop" for the most friendly jurisdiction). So the CoA upheld the District Court's decision that, as the German injunction is sort of dependent on the US breach of contract case, Motorola shouldn't be allowed to enforce it until that case is over (some time in early 2013, possibly).
But IANAL, nor an expert in US or German patent
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But IANAL, nor an expert in US or German patent law, or in multi-jurisdiction injunctive relief.
And yet, you've done a very clear and accurate summary of the issues here. Nice job.
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Their reasoning seems to be that *if* Motorola was in breach of contract by not licensing its patents to MS at RAND rates
Does *anyone* have any sort of concrete evidence as to what a reasonable rate is? I haven't seen anyone anywhere actually put any sort of specific values on this. I would especially love to see this fair and reasonable rate compared against the rate that Microsoft licenses their patents to Android manufacturers.
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This reminds me of the ruling by Judge Posner when he dismissed both Apple's and Motorola's lawsuits against each other because they couldn't agree on a rate. If e.g. the 1.5-2.5% range applies to the whole portfolio, Apple (and Posner!) interpret this to mean that using "one percent" of the portfolio means one percent of the fair rate, because any other rate is a “nonlinear royalty” and “mathematically disproportionate". Motorola failed to argue that buying the whole portfolio is like b
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You're doing it wrong. The EU is not a country, it's a union of like-minded sovereign nations.
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... a union of (fairly) like-minded sovereign states which have agreed to give up some of their sovereignty to the EU, in return for the benefits of being involved the Union.
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Well, it's a member country of the EU.
The passing of sovereignty to the EU is a very slow process, taking decades usually.
So, there are no federal taxes, there is mostly no federal law enforcement (there are some special offices to combat fraud related to EU money, there is a "supreme" (kind of) European Court, but there is no European police in general).
Foreign policy is still mostly done on the country level. That's why the UK often plays the lap dog for Washington. There is no common currency as such, th
Re:Apple? (Score:4, Insightful)
Does the recent Apple vs Samsung patent case ring any bells?
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Oh boy.
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Skimming the Wikipedia page [wikipedia.org] of the Apple v Samsung battle, Apple have lost 4 rounds and Samsung 5 rounds. However, in some cases they've both lost, and some are being appealed (or have been appealed). Then some also involve counter-claims, whereas others are just one-sided. At the moment they're up to about 50 lawsuits in nearly a dozen countries. It's rather depressing.
However, I wouldn't say that Apple *keeps* winning. One hopes that the inconsistencies between the rulings are due to differences in laws (
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Considering the Jury misconduct that transpired with their lawsuit on the Samsung deal, you might want to dial that fanboism back a bit... But then, this is /. and you posted as an anon coward...unsurprising.
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Re:Fairness - from the article (Score:4, Informative)
WTF? Go cry me a river. Since when does a company ( that isn't a monopoly ) have to be fair and charge 'reasonable' prices? Especially to the competition...
Here's one example:
Reasonable and non-discriminatory terms (RAND), also known as fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory terms (FRAND), are a licensing obligation that is often required by standard-setting organizations for members that participate in the standard-setting process.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_and_non-discriminatory_licensing [wikipedia.org]
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... since that company entered into a contract, one of the terms of which was that it would issue fair and non-discriminatory licences (that being a condition of getting the processes covered by the patents involved adopted as an official standard by the ITU).
Whether or not it has done so is something the court may rule on later this year, but a contract is a contract.
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And German courts have no right to rule the meaning of the contract?
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The German courts can, of course, examine the contract, but it couldn't be raised in that specific case.
The contract was between Motorola and the ITU. Microsoft wasn't a primary party to the contract, and so normally, MS wouldn't be able to sue on the basis of it. However, under certain countries' laws (including the US, but not Germany), a third party can sue for breach of a contract if they benefit in some way under the contract. So in the US, MS was able to sue Motorola for breaching its contract (by not