Motorola And Apple Discussed Patent Licensing Deal Last Year

Motorola Mobility held talks with Apple late last year to potentially resolve the ongoing patent war by arranging a cross-licensing agreement.

The previously unknown talks, revealed in a recently published EU document clearing Google’s acquisition of Motorola, sought to benefit all Android device makers by negotiating patent deals with licensed patents and royalties.

Carve-outs and competition

FOSS Patents’ Florian Mueller reports that the two companies met on several occasions, including a two-day meeting in November, and discussed potential resolutions involving payments and licensing. However, Mueller noted that due to there being “many disputes in many jurisdictions”, any deal “would require a worldwide solution and couldn’t possibly be brokered in Germany”.

As already mentioned, the talks were intended to help avoid further courtroom meetings. The European Commission identified that while the acquisition of Motorola would give Google some ability to “significantly impede effective competition”, Apple and Microsoft would retaliate and swiftly counter-sue against Android manufacturers with their patent portfolios.

The document’s mention of necessary “carve-outs” in any potential deal is highlighted by Mueller. Carve-outs allow certain patents to be excluded from a licensing deal and would impose conditions on others. He says that Apple would seek these clauses to protect its “exclusive intellectual property”.

A footnote in the EC document gives an example of where such protection would be necessary for the Cupertino company:

“According to Apple, Motorola Mobility has insisted that Apple cross-licenses its full non-SEP [standard essential patent] portfolio in exchange for Motorola Mobility’s SEPs. Apple also argues that its refusal to accede to this demand led Motorola Mobility to sue Apple in an attempt to exclude Apple’s products from the market.”

It should be noted that the discussions referred to in the footnote occurred before Google’s acquisition was cleared, and the EC notes that the position was representative of Motorola’s own agenda.

So far in 2012, Motorola has been as aggressive as Apple in pursuing patent claims and in February the mobile maker enforced a preliminary injunction from December 2011 to remove iPhones and iPads from German stores.