Judge changes mind, grants Apple an injunction hearing against Motorola (and vice versa)
Judge Richard Posner, the Seventh Circuit judge sitting by designation on the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois to preside over an Apple v. Motorola lawsuit …
Context & Ripple Effects
Judge Richard Posner has been a hostile venue for both sides so far this year: in May he publicly scolded Apple's lawyers over frivolous filings, while Motorola entered the summer with its exclusion strategy in tatters — a failed 3G/UMTS injunction bid in Germany in February and a final ITC ruling finding no violation against Apple in March.
Against that backdrop, Posner's decision to grant BOTH Apple and Motorola an injunction hearing is a procedural reversal with real stakes: it reopens the injunctive-relief question in the Northern District of Illinois just as Motorola's standard-essential-patent leverage has been curtailed elsewhere.
First-order effects
- Apple and Motorola each get a formal hearing on their injunction requests before the June trial, giving Apple a fresh district-court avenue after its ITC loss and Motorola a chance to argue exclusion despite its February ruling that it can't enforce standard-essential patents on FRAND terms.
- Both parties now face added pretrial briefing and argument costs under a judge who has already signaled impatience with weak filings.
Second-order effects
- Motorola's hearing position is weakened by its own record: with German and ITC injunction efforts rebuffed, any exclusion it seeks in Chicago will draw scrutiny over whether FRAND-committed patents can support injunctions at all.
- Google, whose acquisition of Motorola Mobility is pending, inherits whatever precedent this hearing sets for using Motorola's patent portfolio offensively against Apple.
Third-order effects
- If Posner applies his SEP skepticism at the hearing, the case becomes a template for how US courts treat injunction demands built on standard-essential patents — pushing smartphone patent wars toward damages rather than market exclusion.
- A pattern of courts denying or narrowing SEP-based exclusions would shift leverage in cross-license negotiations toward companies with large non-SEP portfolios, a structural concern for every Android-side litigant.
The trend: Smartphone patent litigation is moving away from injunctions as the default weapon, with judges increasingly treating FRAND commitments as a bar to excluding rivals over standard-essential patents.