SAN FRANCISCO — The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit doesn’t get to hear many patent cases. But on Tuesday, it got a doozy.
Microsoft v. Motorola, 12-35352, featured two of the country’s leading appellate advocates arguing for two of the world’s largest technology companies. At issue were a demand for $4 billion in royalties, a U.S. court’s authority to block a German court’s injunction and — the likely dispositive issue — whether federal judges can impose licensing terms on companies that issue standards-essential patents.
