The Empire Strike Back! Google's Motorola Files Patent Suit To Block Apple's U.S. Imports

While we all wait to see the outcome of the Apple vs. Samsung trial, Google is not sitting around and waiting to get sued next. Yesterday, reports Bloomberg, Google’s newly acquired Motorola unit filed for patent-infringement against Apple with the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC). The complaint would block Apple’s import of iPhones, iPads, iPod Touchs and some Macintosh models.

This is just the latest in a series of patent beefs between the parties. Not coincidentally, the iPhone 4S and new iPad 4G use Qualcomm chips and are not affected by Motorola’s claims.

According to TechCrunch, “the complaint will focus on technologies Apple uses in virtually all of its current hardware products. The full complaint, Motorola tells us, won’t be available on the ITC’s website until Monday.” Short of those details, all we have is Motorola’s official statement:

“We would like to settle these patent matters, but Apple’s unwillingness to work out a license leaves us little choice but to defend ourselves and our engineers’ innovations.”

The Wall Street Journal reports that Google/Motorola is alleging that Apple has infringed on seven of its patents, none of which are standard-essential. This distinction is important. As FOSS Patents explains, “The announcement comes six days before the target date for a final decision on the ITC investigation of Motorola’s first ITC complaint against Apple (July 23). A preliminary ruling by an ITC judge held Apple to infringe only one of Motorola’s asserted patents, which is a standard-essential one that raises competition issues and is, therefore, less likely to result in an actual import ban.”

If a patent is deemed to be “essential” to an “industry standard,” then, as Tim Cook told Walt Mossberg, there is just “an economic argument” about how much licensees have to pay the patent holder, but courts rarely grant injunctions for standard-essential patents.

“This means Google’s strategy to address Android’s serious intellectual property issues—Android-based devices have already been held by courts in different jurisdictions to infringe, among other things, nine valid Apple patents,” FOSS Patent’s Florian Mueller continues, ”is further escalation in hopes of such developments forcing cross-license agreements or mutual covenants not to sue.”

Clearly, the current action is intended to put Apple on the defensive, but the strategy may backfire if Apple is emboldened by a positive outcome of the Samsung trial. That case is prelude to an all-out assault on Android by Apple, which Google may prefer to settle out of court.