Hearings in the patent lawsuit between Google and Microsoft are winding down, and with the final day of testimony came one whopper of a claim from Motorola. Yesterday, Motorola sent expert Michael Dansky to the stand, who testified that Microsoft stands to make as much as $94 billion through 2017 with the allegedly illegal use of Motorola patents. His estimate includes products like the Xbox 360 and Microsoft Surface, but Reuters points out that Dansky didn’t say how far back he was going to arrive at his estimate.


If accurate, that’s certainly a lot of money, which is why Google and Motorola are taking Microsoft to court. Google is asking that Microsoft be forced to pay $4 billion per year for using its patents. Microsoft has a much different value in mind: the Windows 8 maker thinks that just $1 million a year is a suitable amount. There’s a pretty big discrepancy between those two numbers, so now it comes down to US District Judge James Robert, who will spend the next few weeks determining just how much Microsoft should pay for Motorola’s video and wireless technology patents.

This is a big case for Google, considering that a major reason it paid $12.5 billion for Motorola was so it would have have access to the company’s vast patent portfolio. This case against Microsoft should give us an idea of whether or not that was a good purchase for Google. If it isn’t awarded a high royalty by Robert, that might mean that Google won’t be able to rely on Motorola’s patent portfolio as much as it was planning on, regardless of how massive that portfolio may be.

Meanwhile, patents battles like this have been raging all across the world. Motorola and Microsoft certainly aren’t strangers to patent battles – neither are a number of Android manufacturers and, of course, Apple. Keep it tuned here to Android Community, as we’ll update you on this case once we have more information!

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