INTERNET : GOOGLE BACKS DOWN, COMMISSION STANDS ITS GROUND.

On 10 January, Google gave up legal action started in November 2010 in the US against Microsoft for violating patents on video compression. Motorola, which has become a Google subsidiary, obtained two answers from US justice: in April 2012, US justice confirmed the violation of its patents in Germany; and in May, US justice issued a ban on the sale of Microsoft Xbox games. The fact that Google has renounced the procedure is a result of a call to order which Google received from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), on 3 January, regarding the use it makes of standard-essential patents in the field of telecoms. Google was forced to make binding commitments on these legal injunctions against a competitor to prevent it from using the technology in question.

The telecoms regulators have laid down that if a functionality is essential to the development of the sector (in particular for 3G, 4G/LTE, GSM or video compression standards), the patent holder is under obligation to grant its competitors a licence under fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms. Google had been refusing to do this, and had filed more complaints against other companies. The acquisition of Motorola Mobility in February 2012 allowed the Mountain View-based company to get its hands on 17,000 patents and 7,500 patents pending and to use them against its competitors. But this practice equates to an abuse of dominant position - which is why the...