Motorola and Apple have been locked in one of the many patent battles currently going on in the tech arena. Apple has now shown some willingness to settle the whole fiasco by offering to pay $1 per iPhone to Motorola.
The patents that are at issue in this case are related to certain standard-essential patents that are currently owned by Motorola. Being their owner, Motorola reserves the right to license the patents. However, under the right terms and conditions, it will be mandatory for the company to license them to other vendors in the market.
Apple has now shown willingness to license the patents from Motorola. However, the company has said that at maximum, it is willing to pay $1 per iPhone sold to Motorola for making use of these patents.
According to Apple’s filing, “Motorola cannot offer evidence at this trial that the rate should be higher than $1 per phone, but to the extent the Court sets the rate higher than $1 per unit, Apple reserves the right to exhaust all appeals and needs also to reserve the right available to any party offered a license: the right to refuse and proceed to further infringement litigation. Make no mistake, that is not an outcome Apple desires.”
In other words, Apple is telling Motorola to take the easy way out by taking the $1 per iPhone deal or else, Apple will continue the legal battle, making it harder for Motorola to get any money out of it. Motorola had originally sought 2.25 percent of Apple’s sales for making use of its standard-essential patents, a demand which essentially asks for many times more money.
According to the patent analyst, Florian Mueller, “Apple’s ‘$1 maximum’ position may be justified from a FRAND point of view (I guess it is) but such a deal wouldn’t give Google the strategic leverage over Apple that it hoped to get when it paid $12.5 billion for Motorola Mobility.”
Source: FOSS Patents
Courtesy: Apple Insider
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