Motorola Mobility has seen one of its prized patents covering technology to synchronize messages across several devices declared as in invalidate in the UK.
Judge Richard Arnold presiding in a case between Motorola and Microsoft believes Motorola’s patent is invalid and said it should be revoked because it contained technology that “was obvious to experts in the field at the time.”
According to Bloomberg, “Microsoft filed the lawsuit against Motorola Mobility in London a year ago in a pre-emptive bid to invalidate the patent before it could be sued for infringement.”
“We’re pleased the court granted our request to invalidate Motorola’s patent and welcome yet another step toward clarifying the cases between our companies,” David Howard, Microsoft’s deputy general counsel, said in an e-mailed statement to Bloomberg.
There is Motorola is currently in the process of suing Microsoft over this very patent in Germany. If Motorola prevails in Germany, Microsoft could face damages for infringement by way of its Live Messenger and ActiveSync protocol.
A similar case is currently ongoing in Germany, where the two companies are battling it out over the same patent. Motorola has already sued Apple in a German court for infringing on the same pager patent that was ruled invalid today acording to the report. This resulted in a ban to Apple push e-mail functionality to iCloud users in Germany.
Source: Bloomberg
