UK court rules against Motorola’s “sync messages” patent

On Friday, the High Court in London issued a ruling that said that one of Motorola’s patents covering technology to synchronize messages across several devices should be invalidated. Originally, the patent covered the synching of messages across multiple pagers, but recently Motorola has used the patent in lawsuits against Apple and Microsoft for using similar message-syncing services in iCloud and on the Xbox, respectively.

The presiding Judge Richard Arnold declared Motorola's patent invalid and said it should be revoked because the patent (which has a priority date from 1995, but was issued in 2002) contained technology that “was obvious to experts in the field at the time.” The case against Motorola was brought by Microsoft Corp., which “filed the lawsuit against Motorola Mobility in London a year ago in a pre-emptive bid to invalidate the patent before it could be sued for infringement,” as Bloomberg reported.

Microsoft and Motorola have locked horns over intellectual property in courts in the US and Germany over the past year, and Motorola is currently in the process of suing Microsoft over this very patent in Germany. If Motorola prevails in Germany, Microsoft could face damages for infringement by way of its Live Messenger and ActiveSync protocol.

Earlier this year, Motorola also sued Apple in a German court for infringing on the same pager patent that was ruled invalid today. But in that case Motorola’s patent was upheld and the court barred Apple from pushing e-mail to German iCloud and MobileMe users.