The latest instalment of the smartphone wars has seen Slaughter and May and Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton face Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer as the European Union takes steps to reduce the seemingly never-ending and costly trail of patent disputes, saying that Motorola Mobility broke EU law by trying to use its patents to block sales of Apple products in Germany.
The decision by EU competition commissioner Joaquin Almunia this week found that smartphone manufacturer Motorola misused the standard essential patent and breached EU antitrust rules by using an injunction obtained against Apple in Germany in an attempt to create hold ups in the German court, thereby deliberately impeding competition.
