Microsoft Corporation v. Motorola, Inc

In this interlocutory appeal, Motorola appeals from the district court’s preliminary injunction to enjoin Motorola temporarily from enforcing a patent injunction that it obtained against Microsoft in Germany. We review the district court’s grant of a foreign anti-suit injunction under the deferential abuse-of-discretion standard, and affirm.

I. BACKGROUND

The parties are involved in ongoing contract and patent litigation before the district court. We recite here only the factual and procedural history most relevant to this interlocutory appeal.

A. Standard-setting organizations and intellectual property law

The underlying case before the district court concerns how to interpret and enforce patent-holders’ commitments to industry standard-setting organizations (“SSOs”), which establish technical specifications to ensure that products from different manufacturers are compatible with each other. See generally Mark A. Lemley, Intellectual Property Rights and Standard-Setting Organizations, 90 Calif. L.Rev. 1889 (2002). Specifically, the case involves the H.264 video coding standard set by International Telecommunications Union (“ITU”), and the 802.11 wireless local area…