Google, FTC officially settle Motorola patent spat

Google hasn’t had much to show for its acquisition of Motorola and the Federal Trade Commission is making sure it stays that way. The FTC announced on Wednesday that it had reached a settlement withGoogle over the company’s alleged misuse of Motorola’s standard-essential patents whereby Google will agree to license the patents “on fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory or FRAND terms.” Google and the agency had originally agreed to a settlement of the Motorola patent case late last year but the FTC says it’s made some revisions to the original terms, “including those pertaining to the arbitration process established to resolve disputes over FRAND terms,” after hearing public comments.

Google, of course, primarily acquired Motorola for the value of its patent portfolio and the company has admitted that nearly half of the $12.4 billion it paid to buy the company was related to its intellectual property holdings. Google hasn’t done much with Motorola since buying it other than laying off its workforce and selling it off its divisions for parts, although that’s changed recently with the release of Motorola’s latest Droid devices and the upcoming release of the Moto X smartphone.

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(BGR.com)

(These latest Intellectual Property (IP) news and events presented here, are prepared and compiled by us, the World Patent & Trademark Law Office (WPTO),for your reference and information)