Apple, Motorola Appeal Decision to Dismiss Patent Infringement Case

Apple and Motorola Mobility, now a subsidiary of Google, have separately appealed the June decision of a U.S. federal judge to throw out their patent infringement case, according to reports.

Judge Richard Posner of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois dismissed the patent case "with prejudice," last month, denying requests from both companies for injunctions and ruling that neither party could resubmit the lawsuit. 

Apple had filed a suit against Motorola, alleging that devices such as the Droid and associated software infringed on its patents. Motorola brought a counterclaim that Apple was infringing its own patents. 

In separate filings Friday, Apple and Motorola Mobility appealed Posner's rulings, according to published reports.

Apple and Motorola were not immediately available for comment.

"Apple and Google subsidiary Motorola Mobility have both decided to appeal every single decision that Judge Posner made that wasn't in their favor," said legal analyst and consultant Florian Mueller in a blog post Saturday. "They leave no stone unturned." Mueller has been tapped as a consultant for tech companies including Oracle and Microsoft.

Among other rulings in the case, Posner decided that testimony of various expert witnesses was inadmissible. Posner also pared down Apple's four original patent infringement claims to one, and then dismissed the remaining claim as its request for an injunction.

Posner, who has generally been sharply critical of patent infringement cases, also denied Motorola's counterclaim for patent infringement and request for an injunction against Apple related to patents that were licensed under FRAND (fair, reasonable and nondiscriminatory) terms. "By committing to license its patents on FRAND terms, Motorola committed to license the [patent] to anyone willing to pay a FRAND royalty and thus implicitly acknowledged that a royalty is adequate compensation for a license to use that patent," Posner wrote.

Apple on Friday appealed, among other rulings, Posner's decision to strike Apple's damages expert and underlying damages theories and Apple’s entitlement to an injunction with respect to its patents, according to Mueller.

Motorola appealed, among other rulings, those portions of Posner's order in which the judge struck Motorola's damages expert and underlying damages theories, according to Mueller.

The two companies also have a case pending before the U.S. International Trade Commission and lawsuits ongoing in a number of other countries.