Wednesday, February 5, 2014

Motorola Mobility takes MPEG-2 license from MPEG LA, settles disputes with Philips, Mitsubishi, Thomson

On Tuesday, patent pool firm MPEG LA announced that "Motorola Mobility LLC [a Google subsidiary for now] became licensed for its MPEG-2 products under the MPEG-2 Patent Portfolio License offered by MPEG LA" and that certain contributors to the MPEG-2 patent pool "agreed to dismiss patent infringement actions brought against Motorola in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida". In August I reported on those lawsuits filed by Philips, Mitsubishi and Thomson.

Law360 already reported in January on the stipulated dismissal of two of those lawsuits, a fact that indicated a settlement.

If Motorola Mobility had taken, in addition to an MPEG-2 license, an AVC/H.264 license, Google would no longer have been able to argue (on grounds that never convinced me) that its own MPEG LA license agreement didn't entitle Microsoft to a license grant-back on the same per-patent terms. I wouldn't be surprised to see Motorola Mobility take an AVC/H.264 license from MPEG LA as well -- or Lenovo may already have one. Anyway, Microsoft is not a contributor to the MPEG-2 pool.

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