ITC Dismisses Final Motorola Mobility Patent In Apple Lawsuit

Apple appears to have secured a decisive patent victory over Google as the US International Trade Commission (ITC) dismissed the final assertion left in Motorola Mobility’s complaint against the iPhone manufacturer.

Motorola had initially accused Apple of infringing six of its patents in its smartphones, but these have now been thrown out by the ITC.

The latest patent covers a “sensor controlled user interface for portable communication device” and relates to a feature that makes a touch screen ignore touches if the user is on a phone call and the smartphone is close to his head.

Motorola Mobility patents

Google had wanted the ITC to ban the import of any iPhone including this feature, however this will obviously no longer happen unless Google appeals to the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.

The same court is currently considering an appeal by Google over the ITC’s decision to throw out three of the other five patents in the lawsuit, which was first filed in 2010.

Analyst Florian Mueller says that this latest defeat for Google is yet another failure in the search giant’s attempt to use the patent portfolio acquired in the £8 billion takeover of Motorola Mobility into leverage against a rival.

Google has revealed that it values the patents at £3.5 billion, but last Friday, Google lost a separate claim against Microsoft after a German court refused to grant an injunction over a push notification patent that is believed to be most likely invalid.

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