Microsoft vs. Motorola: Not so FRANDly

I’m sure you’ve heard of the feud between the two tech giants Microsoft and Apple, but have you heard the feud between Microsoft and Motorola? (Scroll down for the flowchart.)

Back in the day, Microsoft, Apple and other brands as such had to pay 2.25% royalty to license its patented technologies, according to The Wall Street Journal. Mind you this was during the period of early stages of smart technologies. With the Internet of Things (IoT) growing, these tech brands had to capitalise on such innovative and solid technologies to stay ahead in the game.

However, Microsoft felt that those royalty prices were a little too much. And honestly, $4 billion made by Motorola off of those patents was not a small revenue stream.

Microsoft filed a case against Motorola. This was on the basis of F/RAND, standing for ‘reasonable and non-discriminatory’ (in Europe, they add an ‘F’ – for “fair” yielding ‘FRAND’, but the meaning is the same). While the case in U.S. Courts was proceeding, Motorola sued Microsoft in Germany for patent infringement. The German district court granted to Motorola an injunction prohibiting Microsoft from selling allegedly infringing products in Germany based on German patent law. To beat this, Microsoft sought an anti-suit injunction against an injunction of patent infringement in Germany. In simple words, Microsoft got the court to stop Motorola from continuing the patent infringement case while the F/RAND case was still ongoing in the U.S. Court.

After this cat and mouse fight of both companies, the judgement ruled in favour of Microsoft. Motorola really felt the brunt of losing a major source of revenue. Motorola was finally bought off by Lenovo back in 2014. Lenovo has unified both phone businesses under its own name. Resulting in a complete wipe off of the brand ‘Motorola’. Lenovo will be producing phones under the brand name ‘Moto’ now.

What are your thoughts on this? Leave them in the comments section below!