Week 12 - Post 2: ITC Throws Out Motorola Patent Suit

        Today I read another interesting article about a lawsuit of Motorola vs. Apple that I had written about several weeks ago.  Essentially, "the U.S. International Trade Commission on Monday ended a two-and-a-half year patent suit leveraged by Motorola against Apple, throwing out the the case as the last of six patents-in-suit was found to be invalid."  In other words, Apple is finally off the hook from a suit that took over two years to come to a close - indicating just how much time (and presumably money) can be wasted through the process of litigation, especially for trivial mobile device patents.  The patent itself was for a "sensor controlled user interface for portable communication devices," which referred to technology allowing a touch screen to ignore accidental screen touches while making a phone call.
        I remember that Apple had at one point been behind Motorola regarding the final patent in dispute, as the presiding Judge Thomas Pender had ruled that Apple had actually infringed upon the patent.  However upon examining prior art from an earlier-filed Motorola patent, Pender ruled that this more recent patent was invalid for lack of novelty in comparison to the earlier-filed patent.  The ITC Commission itself even found the Motorola patent to be obvious considering their earlier-filed patent, along with common knowledge from another patent.  Google now has the opportunity to pursue an appeal through the U.S. Court of Appeals through the Federal Circuit.

        The most interesting part of this entire fiasco was that Motorola would likely have won their suit against Apple if they had not filed the earlier-patent related to the screen technology that they did.  It is ironic that the prior art used to find Motorola's patent invalid was their own earlier patent.  Had the prior art not existed, Pender would have ruled in Motorola's favor and Apple would be facing an injunction in the United States that would be extremely detrimental to them.  I wonder then if there was a possibility for Motorola to have asserted the earlier patent that was used as prior art?  If the newer patent was deemed obvious in comparison to the older patent, I would think Motorola would have been able to find a way to prove Apple infringed on their older prior art patent.   I am curious to hear everyone else's opinions on this.

Link: http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/04/22/itc-throws-out-motorola-patent-suit-against-apple