Motorola Mobility continues to fight against Microsoft's patent attacks. A lower regional court of Mannheim ruled that Motorola devices do not infringe upon a Microsoft patent related to 'radio interface layer that provides a level of abstraction between the radio and software on a cell phone.' This patent is used by the "applications on the phone to access the phonebook entries, restrict access to data and access file and message storage among many other functions."

This is a significant win for Motorola in Germany. However Microsoft is playing every dirty trick the flawed US system allows.

When Motorola used it's patents to get Microsoft's Xbox banned in Germany, Microsoft ran to it's mommy and got an order from a US court prohibiting Motorola from getting a ban on the Xbox.

At the same time, both Apple and Microsoft are playing the FRAND card telling the courts that Motorola and Samsung are breaching FRAND terms. Groklaw's Palmela Jones tends to not agree:

Apple is following in Microsoft's FRAND footsteps, and they both are marching to the same drummer, that the license is more or less automatically in place as soon as either of them wants it to be, and the price can be worked out post-license. Of course, Samsung disagrees, as does Motorola, but so far some courts seem to be going along with the argument, which is deeply puzzling, in that a contract that includes monetary terms can't really be in place, unless I missed something in school, without consideration and both sides agreeing to the terms. So I expect to see a lot more on this theme in appeals.

PJ rightly said about the US system:

I hope you also see why politicians are currently trying their best to stack the courts with judges who see things their way. People who want to win no matter how, and who believe in might-makes-right, view it as a great solution. But I hope you see why it is so important to keep politics out of the courts. What is the point of having a judicial system where you get rubber-stamped, political results, rather than results based on the facts of your case? It makes a mockery of the concept of blind justice, not to mention Constitutional principles, meaning not looking at who the parties are but just evenly treating all comers, based on the law and the facts.

The entire US system was originally designed to protect the little guy, the least powerful person in society, from the full power of the government. Folks who designed it had already experienced in Europe what it was like to be a minority group religiously or politically in a system where the king and his supporters would come to power and kill off or toss in prison members of opposing factions or just folks with the currently "wrong" religion or politics.

The US wanted to be different. It wanted a system that would protect everyone by creating a system that did not follow the might-makes-right way of doing things, where even the most powerless was provided certain protections from the majority. Voting in judges, therefore, is probably the very last way you want to put them into office, frankly, as retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor has been trying to tell the country for a couple of years now.

Why? Because once the public loses all hope of fairness in the courts, it's a very sad day, because it breaks down the rule of law. Respect for the law and for decisions issuing from the courts is the glue that holds it all together, if you really think deeply about it.

How worse is it going to get with the broken patents system and is a new threat to our freedom emerging in the name of copyrights and piracy?