Re: I wonder...
One reason Microsoft are leaving Germany is due to Germany's bifurcated patent trials. In Germany, findings of infringement are made in a separate parallel trial from the investigation of the patent's validity. Each trial is run by a different judge and runs on a different timeline. The infringement trial is very quick, whilst the validity trial can drag on for a few years. This means that the infringement trial can result in an injunction and a couple of years later, the validity trial can decide that the patent was never valid in the first place and lift the injunction. However, the defendant must suffer a couple of years of injunction to get to the final decision on the patent's validity.
Due to this bifurcated trial system, a plaintiff with a clearly invalid patent can still get an injunction in Germany for a couple of years.
To my knowledge, Germany is the only country in the world that has this bifurcated system.
The German system is also flawed because it will not consider the anti-competitive behavior of Motorola (and others, such as Apple and perhaps Samsung) in getting their technology accepted by an industry standards committee by agreeing to license it on RAND terms but then not doing so. Relevant to this dispute, the H.264 patent pool offers more than 1,000 H.264-essential patents (from scores of companies) for less than 1/1000 of royalty that Motorola want for a single patent. Motorola's position is hardly "reasonable" in this instance. Apple, and I believe Samsung, have both taken similar ridiculous positions about how much royalty they should get for standards-essential patents for which they have previously made RAND commitments.
It's my understanding that the Netherlands courts will consider the anti-competitive nature of the royalty that Moto are demanding at the same time that they consider the issues of infringement and patent validity. I consider the Netherlands' approach to be very reasonable and intelligent because it resolves the entire dispute in a holistic manner. It makes perfect sense why Microsoft prefer to be in the Netherlands.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
