US judge derails Motorola case to block Xbox 360 sales in US and Germany

It’s a victory for Frand innovation. What the Xbox is a Frand? It stands for ‘Fair, Reasonable, and Non-Discriminatory’. It’s a legal term, meaning something is ‘accepted as industry standard’.

This led to a presiding US judge to rule Motorola’s case for banning US and German sales of Xbox 360 as baseless. It’s over video encoding patents and Motorola wanted $4bn a year.

However the ActiveSync technology which encodes video in H.264 format is Frand, and so it would be unfair of Motorola to penalise Microsoft for using it as everyone else does.

Microsoft notably didn’t challenge Motorola’s assertion that the Xbox 360 maker should pay them large sums of money over use of the patents. The case for banning sales was Microsoft’s chief concern. A fair rate for patent use is still to be deliberated, with a jury set to rule whether 2.25% in royalties is too high and therefore breaching contract.

There are a number of Motorola patents used with the Xbox 360, including the Wi-Fi.