New lawsuit filed on Motorola patents
Motorola Inc. last week filed a new patent infringement lawsuit against Qualcomm Inc. in San Diego federal court, claiming all of Qualcomm’s wireless phones violate Motorola patents.
The infringement claims are against Qualcomm’s Code Division Multiple Access Q phone, five cellular phone products and an integrated circuit product. Motorola filed its first suit against Qualcomm in April, claiming the Q phone copies the basic look and functions of the Motorola StarTac wearable cellular phone. A California district court denied Motorola’s request for a preliminary injunction and lifted a temporary restraining order that had barred Qualcomm from commercially producing and selling the Q phone. A trial is pending.
The new lawsuit seeks to have Qualcomm permanently prohibited from further patent infringement as well as damages for Qualcomm’s past infringement, said Motorola.
“This new lawsuit is a result of Motorola’s on-going effort to examine all of Qualcomm’s recent conduct and bring appropriate new infringement claims before court,” said Suzette Steiger, corporate vice president and assistant general manager of Motorola’s Pan American Cellular Subscriber Group. “Motorola is not willing to allow Qualcomm to misuse Motorola’s intellectual property while at the same time demanding that Motorola pay high royalties to properly use Qualcomm’s intellectual property.”
Steiger also stated that although Motorola and Qualcomm signed cross-license agreements in 1990 that grant Qualcomm a royalty-bearing license to use some of Motorola’s patents, the patents that are the subject of this new lawsuit are not licensed to Qualcomm.
Qualcomm denied any of its CDMA products infringe on Motorola’s patents, and said the lawsuit repeats previous claims, citing three patents already at issue in earlier lawsuits pending between the companies in San Diego federal court. It said the cited patents are not specific to CDMA.
“Motorola’s filings appear to be an attempt to bully Qualcomm into renegotiating a long-standing contract and royalty arrangement despite the high value Motorola receives from our CDMA patents,” said Steve Altman, senior vice president and general counsel for Qualcomm. “Now that CDMA has achieved widespread acceptance and Motorola is apparently closer to entering the market with a CDMA phone, Motorola no longer appears content with the deal struck to gain access to Qualcomm’s technology.”
