IBTimes.com

Motorola has sought a judgment from the court to restrict Apple from exercising 12 patent rights against Motorola Mobility, even though Apple has not filed a lawsuit against Motorola.

In a court filing with the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware, Motorola Mobility based its pre-emptive action, seeking a judgment that Apple has no rights against it based on the patents-in-suit, on Apple's history of asserting the patents against Android. It cited an example of Apple suing HTC over the patents.

"Motorola Mobility has a reasonable apprehension that it faces an infringement suit related to the patents-in-suit," it said, pointing out that Motorola Mobility uses Android as its OS for its series of smartphones.

In the filing it also cited that it had entered into confidential negotiations with Apple regarding the licensing of the aforesaid patents.

The patents are related to Motorola's key products which include Droid, Droid2, Droid X, Cliq, Cliq XT, Back Flip, Devour A555, i1 and Charm. Motorola Mobility claims that a controversy over the patents-in-suit exists between the parties but also claimed that it has not infringed on any of the patents.

The filing by Motorola Mobility was made just a day after it had filed a lawsuit against Apple on Oct. 7, regarding infringement of 18 patents. In that filing Motorola had said that it had entered into negotiations with Apple, but Apple had declined to take a license.

According to Alexander Poltorak, the Chairman and CEO of General Patent Corporation, Motorola was once a dominant player in mobile industry but lost its market share to Apple. Since Motorola Mobility was spun-off as a separate entity to strictly focus on mobile equipment and infrastructure development, its only source of revenue is now from mobile phones. Thus it is resorting to any means both in the market and the court to regain its market share from its competition.

The stay sought by Motorola against Apple is a pre-emptive measure that it is applying to protect any future lawsuits filed by Apple.

According to Poltorak smartphone makers who possess significant patent stacks but have declining market share will further file lawsuits to hedge their market share in the dynamic mobile industry.

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