Our coverage of Motorola’s brief injunction against the sale of 3G iDevices in Germany yesterday questioned whether Motorola or Apple was being unreasonable in the licensing negotiations. Evidence is pointing to Motorola's demands wandering into the unreasonable.
Information released by FOSS patents suggest Motorola’s 3G technologies FRAND licensing offer to Apple that would end the current legal dispute involves Apple handing over a 2.25% share of Apple’s sales. It is unclear if this percentage is of all Apple revenues or a percentage of Apple’s 3G devices sales (seeing as the dispute is over 3G technology).
Florian Mueller of FOSS patents described Motorola's 2.25% request as “excessive,” especially concerning Apple’s latest quarterly earnings report. In fact if the court forces Apple to pay the 2.25% they’ll owe Motorola just over $2.1 billion out of the $93 billion in iPhone revenue since 2007. Apple successfully suspended the ban claiming that Motorola’s “deal” was anti-competitive and is currently gathering information from other handset makers concerning their FRAND agreements with Motorola.
The major player not mentioned yesterday in this whole FRAND mess is Google. If Google’s acquisition of Motorola is finalized, and Apple eventually has to pay 2.25% of something to Motorola, all of that money will go right into Google’s coffers. All outcomes point to Apple paying Motorola something, the only variables are how much and if Google will eventually benefit.
Source: FOSS Patents [via TUAW]
Reply
