Motorola Mobility (MMI), which is in the process of being acquired by Google (GOOG), tonight announced in a press release that a U.S. International Trade Commission administrative law judge found that Moto was cleared of fault in six of seven patents over which Microsoft (MSFT) sued the company for infringement.
However, Motorola was found guilty of infringing on patent of Microsoft’s, and Moto said that it is seeking clarification about the ways it infringes. A final decision is not expected until late April, Motorola said.
Microsoft originally brought suit over nine patents in October of 2010, but has swelled to 25 different patent suits in various jurisdictions around the world. The ITC trial took place in August of this year. Microsoft claimed Moto’s use of Google’s Android operating system infringed on its technology innovations. Motorola in turn has filed suit in various jurisdictions charging Microsoft with violating 25 of Motorola’s own patents, through technology Microsoft included in numerous Microsoft products, including its Xbox game player, its Windows Phone 7 operating system software, and its Exchange server.
This evening’s preliminary finding follows the ITC’s ruling yesterday that Motorola’s Taiwanese competitor, HTC (2498TW) violated a single patent of Apple’s (AAPL) with HTC’s use of Android.
Motorola shares are down a penny in late trading at $38.69. Shares of Microsoft are down 9 cents at $25.93 while Google stock is unchanged this evening at $630.37.
Motorola’s announcement says the single patent upon which it was found to infringe is “the Microsoft 566 patent,” which would appear to be a reference to U.S. patent number 6,370,566, applied for in April of 1998 and granted in April of 2002, which offers a method for “Generating meeting requests and group scheduling from a mobile device.” The primary element of that patent appears to be the way software internally represents calendar appointments as unique instances, so that multiple programs and devices can all keep current on the status of that appointment.
Scribd maintains an interesting document discussing the ins and outs of the patent as it may pertain to a given Motorola device.
It seems the ITC has found that Motorola may have infringed on Microsoft’s patent numbered 6,370,566, pertaining to synchronization of data between devices over a network, especially with respect to a mobile device.
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