A preliminary ruling by the European Commission, published today, has once again call into question, Google’s purchase of Motorola Mobility.
According to the Commission Motorola Mobility was notified that, “seeking and enforcing of an injunction against Apple in Germany on the basis of its mobile phone standard-essential patents (“SEPs”) amounts to an abuse of a dominant position prohibited by EU antitrust rules.”
According to the European Commission:
While recourse to injunctions is a possible remedy for patent infringements, such conduct may be abusive where SEPs are concerned and the potential licensee is willing to enter into a licence on Fair, Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory (so-called “FRAND”) terms. In such a situation, the Commission considers at this stage that dominant SEP holders should not have recourse to injunctions, which generally involve a prohibition to sell the product infringing the patent, in order to distort licensing negotiations and impose unjustified licensing terms on patent licensees. Such misuse of SEPs could ultimately harm consumers.
Mueller of Fosspatent fame has been quick to point out that Google has not received much returns from their purchase of Motorola Mobility:
The acquisition of Motorola Mobility has given Google zero leverage against Microsoft so far, and very limited leverage against Apple. In this recent post I summarized all of Google’s patent-related defeats (and its few minor, merely defensive wins) during the last month (April) and also talked about the key decisions made in March. Not only did Google pay a hefty price for patents of rather low strategic value but it also bought some SEP-related antitrust problems.
Source: European Commission