Google owned Motorola has agreed to license its standard essential patents to Apple in Germany, reports FOSS Patents.
Here's some background: Back in December, Motorola had won a preliminary injunction against Apple, banning the sale of 3G devices in Germany. It forced Apple to briefly remove all its 3G iOS devices from its online store in February.
However, Apple managed to get the injunction temporarily suspended by making a revised offer to Motorola for its standard-essential wireless patents. Apple had also filed a complaint with European Commission for violating FRAND (fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory) terms around its standard-essential wireless patents.At that time, experts felt that it may not have any choice left but to accept Apple's offer as the court believes that the offer "from an antitrust point of view is now apparently too good to refuse".
It looks like the two companies have finally reached an agreement after more than six months. Florian Muller of FOSS Patent explains:
In a filing made late on Monday (August 27, 2012) with the United States District Court for the Southern District of California, the Google subsidiary has now confirmed the recent conclusion of a standard-essential patent license agreement with Apple. Under the agreement, Apple is now licensed to use some if not all of Motorola’s standard-essential patents in Germany, though the parties have not yet agreed on a FRAND royalty rate, which will ultimately have to be set by German courts unless they agree on a rate prior to its judicial determination.
Muller points out that this is a significant development:
it means that Motorola Mobility will have to rely on non-standard-essential patents in its efforts to gain leverage over Apple [..]
[..] Apple now knows what kind of offer it has to make to get a license to any other standard-essential Motorola patents without having to grant a license to Google (Motorola) to a single non-standard-essential Apple patent. Apple will be happy to pay FRAND royalties as long as it can pursue differentiation.
Prior to demanding 2.25% of iPhone sales, Motorola wanted access to all Apple patents, not just the standard-essential patents (SEP), Motorola wanted a cross-license to Apple's full patent portfolio in return for its SEP for 3G.
It again highlights that Google's decision to buy Motorola for a whopping $12.5 billion primarily for its patent portfolio and to protect the Android platform may not have been its smartest move.