Apple is being the center child of all the court room battles. We are quite bored of Apple and Samsung injunction battles and now have this Motorola-Apple legal battle. Recently uncovered court documents from Motorola Mobility’s legal complaints against Apple have revealed that the handset maker is seeking 2.25 percent of Apple’s sales of wireless devices in exchange for a patent license covering its standard-essential intellectual property.
Florian Mueller, of FOSS Patents, finds the 2.25 percent shakedown “excessive,” and it only takes a glance at Apple’s latest quarterly earnings statement to see that Apple finds it pretty excessive too. Motorola has not adhered to FRAND rules that insist upon a reasonable rate. Apple has argued that it is covered by a cross-licensing agreement between Motorola and Qualcomm around 3G standards, since it uses Qualcomm radio chipsets in its more recent products.
Apple has filed motions to obtain information from several other handset vendors, including Nokia, HTC, LG, and Sony Ericsson, presumably to find out how much they’re paying in royalty fees to Motorola for the patents in question. The case seems to be taking an interesting turn right now, and we’ll bring you more as we get to know.
