By David Meyer
Motorola has won a permanent injunction against the sale and marketing of Windows 7, the Xbox 360, Internet Explorer 7 and Windows Media Player in Germany, but Microsoft says the products will remain on sale while it launches an appeal.
The ruling in Mannheim regional court on Wednesday morning dealt with two Motorola patents that are essential to the widely-used H.264 video compression technology. Both patents are supposed to be licensed under fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms, and a US court has pre-emptively granted Microsoft a restraining order against Motorola’s enforcement of the German decision, while it examines Motorola’s tactics around those patents.
“This is one step in a long process, and we are confident that Motorola will eventually be held to its promise to make its standard essential patents available on fair and reasonable terms for the benefit of consumers who enjoy video on the web,” Microsoft said in a statement on Wednesday.
“Motorola is prohibited from acting on today’s decision, and our business in Germany will continue as usual while we appeal this decision and pursue the fundamental issue of Motorola’s broken promise,” it added.
