A few weeks ago, a judge recommended that the International Trade Commission place a ban on the importation of the 4 GB and 250 GB versions of Microsoft's Xbox 360 S consoles into the US for violating patents owned by Motorola. Now it looks like a number of companies, including a couple that are normally rivals to Microsoft, are writing letters to the ITC requesting that the organization not ban the US import of the game console.
Ars Technica reports that these companies, which include Apple, Cisco, HP, Nokia, Intel and Activision, feel that Motorola is not offering to license the patents to Microsoft under fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory terms and is instead taking another route by suing Microsoft.
In addition to those companies, a number of US lawmakers have also written to the ITC with their own objections to the possible import ban. US House of Representatives member Darrell Issa (R-CA) told the ITC in his own letter, "An exclusion order would eliminate the only U.S. based videogame console from a market."
Judge David Shaw had previously ruled that the Xbox 360 had infringed on four patents owned by Motorola regarding the use of H.264 video encoding. The judge's ruling then went to the ITC commissioners, which can allow the judge's determinations to stand, or they could also reject the recommendations. The commissioners could also change the judge's recommendations or send them back for more consideration.
Source: Ars Technica
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