A ruling was finally given today over the on-going legal battles between Microsoft and the now Google-owned Motorola, with the judge declaring that the worth of Motorola"s patents are worth far less than Motorola seemed to think they were - $3.99 billion a year less, in fact.
Microsoft and Motorola have had their horns locked in legal battles over Microsoft"s use of several of Motorola"s patents that are part of 802.11 Wi-Fi and H.264 video standards. The patents have been deemed as standards-essential patents, which mean that they have to be licensed to others at a reasonable and non-discriminatory (RAND) rate.
Microsoft"s attorneys claimed that Motorola violated the RAND pact by asking for too much to use the patents - a massive 2.25 percent of the price of Microsoft products that were sold using the patents, including all Windows 7 computers and the Xbox 360.
The new ruling now places the RAND rate for Motorola"s H.264 patent at 0.555 cents for each end product with a reasonable range stretching up to 16.839 cents per product sold. For the 802.11 Wi-Fi patents, the court ruled that 3.471 cents per unit was to be the rate for Xbox products and 0.8 cents per unit for any other products.
The new figures place a massive drop in value on the portfolio with the court stating that the new royalty rate would be just $1,797,554 - a significant drop from $4 billion a year.
If you want to check out all the legal documents, they"re available here.
Source: AllThingsD | Image via Microsoft