German Court Bans Motorola Android Devices

MANNHEIM, Germany – The court fight between Microsoft and Motorola has reached another milestone, with the Google-owned company on the weaker side. The verdict given by Mannheim Regional Court on a FAT patent case has found Motorola infringing on the patent.

The patent EP0618540 is a part of Microsoft’s File Allocation Table (FAT), a legacy file system. This system is basically utilized for backward compatibility, and is used generally. It allows two-way access to stored information by associating a short name and a long name to a file for indexing.

There are several Motorola products such as the Atrix, Razr and Razr Maxx that use this file system on internal storage. Following the decision, Motorola will have to remove all the Android devices from the German market that are infringing the patent, and will have to pay the damages to Microsoft, with the amount yet to be determined.

This case is not related to the unfinished legal dispute between both the companies over FRAND licensing for Motorola’s H.264 patents.