In Apple Inc. v. Motorola Mobility Inc., Western District of Wisconsin Judge Barbara B. Crabb granted summary judgment against Apple on antitrust claims, but allowed its contract claims to stand, in a case alleging that Motorola Mobility refused to license its standard-essential patents on fair, reasonable and nondiscriminatory terms.
Although Motorola’s commitments to standard-setting organizations are contractually binding and Apple is a third-party beneficiary entitled to enforce the contract, the court held that the Noerr-Pennington doctrine, which exempts from the antitrust laws most efforts to enforce intellectual property rights, barred Apple’s antitrust claims because they were premised on Motorola’s patent infringement litigation.
“Apple has produced no evidence,” the court explained, that it suffered injury from Motorola’s demand for royalties. It did not allege that it “change[d] its product, delay[ed] the release of the iPhone, suffer[ed] from increased costs, or los[t] any customers or market share.” Judge Crabb concluded that “the only injury Apple suffered as a result of Motorola’s alleged antitrust violation was the attorney fees and costs that it has incurred responding to the patent litigation initiated by Motorola.”