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Google drops standards-essential patent claims in Xbox slap fight

Video-compression tech claims binned

Googorola is giving up on getting loads of Microsoft gear kicked off the shelves for infringing patents used in the video compression H.264 standard.

Things were looking good for Google in its various suits back in May, when it won an injunction in Germany that applied to Xboxes, Windows 7, Internet Explorer and Windows Media Player, but its success was short-lived - another judge quickly overturned the decision.

Google's Moto was also pushing the case in the US with the International Trade Commission, arguing that Redmond would be paying up to $4bn a year for both its Wi-Fi and video coding patents.

Microsoft was insisting that the intellectual property was only worth around $1m and as it stood, a jury would have had to try to decide if Google's starting point of 2.25 per cent per product was fair.

Instead, Moto has withdrawn its allegations over video encoding, ending that battle of its war against Microsoft, although it's holding on to one complaint in the ITC over a patent for network connectivity.

The use of standards-essential patents in the ongoing litigation between warring mobile firms has been meeting with more and more disapproval. The US Department of Justice and US Patent and Trademark Office sent a statement to the ITC yesterday, asking the commission to use caution in awarding injunctions and to only ban products in specific kinds of cases. ®

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