Motorola withdraws some infringement charges from Xbox case
The company has asked the International Trade Commission to remove Wi-Fi-related patent-infringement claims from its lawsuit against Microsoft.
Microsoft will have fewer patents to contend with in its fight against Google-owned Motorola Mobility.
Motorola earlier this week filed a motion with the International Trade Commission asking that patent-infringement claims it has brought against Microsoft related to Wi-Fi be removed from consideration in their ongoing legal battle. Motorola didn't provide a concrete reason on why it decided against arguing its case.
FOSS Patents' Florian Mueller, who acknowledges having been a paid consultant for Microsoft, was first to report on the move.
Microsoft and Motorola are battling it out all over the world over several patents. Motorola has argued that Microsoft violates patents in several of its products, including Windows, Internet Explorer, and the Xbox. In this case, the Wi-Fi patents relate to wireless networking in use by the Xbox 360.
So far, neither Microsoft nor Motorola has been able to gain an upperhand in their ongoing battle. Earlier this month, a German court ruled that Motorola does not infringe a patent Microsoft holds related to developing applications that can run on different devices without having to write separate code for each product.
That came just a few days after a U.S. federal appeals panel in San Francisco upheld an earlier ruling that stopped the mobile company from blocking Microsoft's Xbox and Windows software sales in Germany. Motorola had previously won a ruling in Germany over Microsoft's alleged use of H.264 patent in its products. A U.S. court has stopped the injunction from being enforced, pending investigation into the matter in the U.S.
With Wi-Fi patents out of the mix, Motorola is planning only to target the Xbox with its H.264 patents in this instance. According to Mueller, an investigation hearing will take place in early December, and the ITC should make its initial determination in March. Microsoft argues that it is due fair terms on Motorola's patents based on FRAND standards and wants the ITC to throw out Motorola's charges.
CNET has contacted both Motorola and Microsoft for comment. We will update this story when we have more information.