We all know about the lawsuits that Apple and Motorola have in the US and about the fact that they will not be resolved soon. Well, a recent trial started last year brought before a judge no less than 21 patents that the 2 companies accuse each other of infringing. Apple invokes 15 patents and Motorola 6 and the judge presiding over the case brought to attention to the two companies the fact that too many patents have been invoked and that the list should be substantially reduced. In the end, Apple chose 8 and Motorola 3 patents, but the judge rejected 2 of Apple's patents and now 9 patents (6 for Apple and 3 for Motorola) are being discussed before the Illinois court.
The order acknowledges that Apple and Motorola made a January 30 submission (which is not in the public electronic record, at least at this stage) that complied with a request to inform the court "of what patents they wish to litigate in the liability trial" , but "not fully satisfactorily". The judge wants more "winnowing" (as he likes to call the narrowing of a case by dropping patent claims) to take place. Originally, there were 21 patents at issue: 15 Apple and 6 Motorola patents. The judge threw out some of those claims on summary judgment, and the parties dropped others in order to be cooperative and narrow the case. This "winnowing" effort had the judge himself confused at some point. On January 23, he listed eight Apple and three Motorola patents that he believed were at issue. After he ruled, by summary judgment, that two of Apple's remaining patents weren't infringed, there would have been six Apple and three Motorola patents in play.
Among the patents pending for Motorola, we find technologies for communications through GPRS, GSM and CDMA networks plus a paging system used for traffic redistribution. At Apple we have patents that describe technologies for: displaying the status of a device, the famous realtime API patent, methods to display notifications depending on the orientation of an object, multitasking, etc. Apple accuses Motorola of using FRAND patents to support its case and it is possible to obtain a victory based on these accusations if Motorola does not respect its obligations regarding this standard.
In the end, the process will continue with the remaining 9 patents under discussion, but it is not known who will be more successful in proving their claims.
