Patent Lawsuit Dropped in Google Motorola and Apple War

The mobile device market has gotten more and more litigious in recent years, as companies charge each other with stolen ideas and hold up the distribution of promised new technology while they wage corporate war. Google Motorola (News - Alert) has dropped its patent-infringement lawsuit against Apple, Inc. with the United States International Trade Commission. Motorola Mobility has retained its rights to re-file the case against Apple (News - Alert) at a different time.

Motorola’s case was filed against Apple on August 17, 2012, citing seven patents held by Motorola that Apple infringed upon with its iPhones, iPads and Mac computers. One key issue is the technology "that allows an audible user input to be converted into a text string," which seems to be referring to the Siri Personal Assistant that is now found on current iPhones. It also feels its rights have been affected with location reminders, phone and video player functions and e-mail notifications.

Motorola has said that it has filed its case due to the fact that Apple has been uncooperative in negotiations aimed at licensing Motorola's patents to Apple to settle the issues. Even though this specific case has been dropped, other earlier patent-infringement claims by Google’s (News - Alert) Motorola and Apple are still being pursued. One of those cases still being pursued, in which Apple alleges that Motorola Mobility failed to license some of its patents, is scheduled to begin November 5 in a federal court in Madison, Wisconsin.

It has been noted that Motorola and Apple executives have been meeting in private but with little to no success. It is speculated that these negotiations could involve cross-licensing deals between the two communications giants.

The partnership that once existed between Motorola and Apple have steadily deteriorated with Apple removing Google Maps and Google YouTube from the new iOS6 and Google has added a voice activation service, similar to Siri, for its Android (News - Alert) operating system. Although it is relieving that one of these cases has been dropped, these battles are increasingly leading to dissatisfied consumers, who are not as deeply entrenched in the proprietary battles as the companies themselves, who are banking on loyalty and receiving only censure instead.

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