Google’s Motorola Patent Lawsuit against Apple… How Could This Impact the Android Market?

The “tug of war” that is being witnessed between Google’s Motorola, the Droid expert and Apple, the manufacturer of iPads and iPhones has closely been followed by experts in the mobile technology. On August 17th, 2012, Google Inc’s Motorola Mobility filed a lawsuit against Apple citing that Cupertino technology giant was infringing its patent rights. This is among the series of trials, which were being put forward by Google Inc's Motorola Mobility in a bid to protect its manufacturing standards of mobile devices like the Android tablet.

Google acquired the android Inc. in 2005 and has since run the operating system as an open source. This has enabled mobile device manufacturers who would like to develop mobile devices using the android operating system to go ahead and use it instead of reinventing their own operating system. Google has been focusing mainly on the advertising field and does not seem to have keen interest in mobile device manufacturing.

The compliant, Google Inc’s Motorola Mobility, had filed a patent case with the U.S. International Trade Commission- ITC. This petition was aimed at compelling the court to rule out in favor of banning US imports of Apple’s devices such as iPads, iPhones and Mac computers. Apple products are manufactured in Asia and Motorola Mobility has been concerned with the way in which Apple has been executing its patent rights, which overlaps with those of the Google’s Motorola Mobility.

Previously, Google had cited that Apple had been unwilling in cooperating in the license issue and it had no other choice than pursue a legal case in order to protect its rights. If Google worn in favor of the case, this could deal a blow the iPad and iPhone manufacturer. Since 2010, Google and Apple have engaged each other in licensing talks that have failed to yield concrete results.

Google sort to defend its engineers’ innovations and had complained that Apple devices features such as location reminders, phone or video players and email notifications were infringing the patent rights of Motorola Mobility. In an earlier move that was meant to retaliate against the claims that were being put forward by Google, Apple argued that Motorola Mobility demands are not realistic and that mobile devices that are designed by Motorola and other manufacturers and which run on android operating system had also copied patented attributes of the Apple’s iPhone.

As these business operations disputes continue to be witnessed among the mobile device manufacturers, it is clear that the “war” is about market supremacy. Business analysis may argue that one organization is afraid that the other could be gaining a competitive advantage and thus one of them is reciprocating by initiating marketing access limitation based on patent rights infringement.

Should the ruling be made in favor of Google’s Motorola Mobility case, then Apple could face tough times in doing business in US. This could create a gap on the innovativeness and accessibility of the mobile devices. Today, consumers in the US have a choice to choose between the Apple devices like iPads and iPhones and the Android devices.

If Apple is not allowed to import its mobile devices to US market, this means that users of mobile devices will be limited to the variety of smartphones they can buy. On the other hand, this could mean that android tablet pc sales in the US could grow exponentially. The consumers will be the most affected because they will not be able to access the quality mobile devices manufactured by Apple.