Fujifilm claims Motorola smartphones infringe patents

Fujifilm has filed a lawsuit against Motorola for patent infringement. Motorola’s smartphones and Xoom tablet are said to infringe four patents, which mainly describe camera and imaging technology.

According to Fujifilm, Motorola has been aware of the patent violation since last year, but the two parties were unable to reach a license agreement. Fujifilm then decided to file a lawsuit seeking damages, according to documents that have appeared online. According to the Japanese manufacturer, Motorola violates four patents with its smartphones, including the Droid series, Atrix, Razr and Defy. The Xoom tablet would also infringe the patents.

In the indictment, Fujifilm lists patents numbered 6,144,763, 6,915,119, 7,327,886 and 5,734,427. These respectively describe techniques in the field of taking a picture with a telephone camera, wireless data transfer, facial recognition and converting a picture to a lower resolution. According to Foss Patents, the techniques in the said patents are described very broadly, which means that it is possible that a judge declares them invalid.

The lawsuit is also important for Google, which acquired Motorola some time ago. In addition, Motorola uses the Android operating system developed by Google for all its mobile devices. A lawsuit against Android mobile phones could therefore have consequences for the development of the mobile OS.

Motorola is already involved in several lawsuits with Apple and Microsoft. Those two companies also accuse Motorola of patent infringement, which has already demanded a sales ban on a number of occasions. Motorola, in turn, filed charges against Apple and Microsoft. Incidentally, other manufacturers of Android devices are also being legally attacked by Apple and Microsoft.