By
Andrew Harris - Mar
5, 2012 11:36 PM CT
The Motorola Mobility unit and Google must also hand over to Apple information about Google’s pending $12.5 billion acquisition of the mobile-phone maker, U.S. Circuit Judge Richard A. Posner in
Chicago ruled
yesterday.
Posner’s decision came in a patent lawsuit filed in 2010 by Cupertino, California-based Apple against Motorola Mobility, which has countersued.
“The Android/Motorola acquisition discovery is highly relevant to Apple’s claims and defenses,” Apple’s attorneys’ said in a March 2 filing requesting the judge’s order.
Apple, maker of the iPhone, has been waging a global fight with the former Motorola Inc. unit that sells phones using
Google
Inc. (GOOG)’s Android operating system.
Posner, a federal appeals court judge who is presiding over the trial court-level case, has scheduled back-to-back trials before separate juries starting June 11. The first will address six Apple patents, and the second will cover three Motorola patents.
“Motorola shall be expected to obtain full and immediate compliance by Google with Apple’s liability discovery demands,” the judge said in a February order.
Motorola’s Opposition
Motorola Mobility opposed Apple’s request, arguing that Google, the operator of the world’s most-visited Internet search portal, isn’t a party to the lawsuit.
“Google’s employees and documents are not within the ‘possession, custody, or control’ of Motorola, and Motorola cannot force Google to produce documents or witnesses over Google’s objections,” lawyers for the mobile phone maker said in a court filing earlier
yesterday.
Niki Fenwick, a spokeswoman at Google, said in an e-mail that the company wouldn’t comment beyond what was submitted in court papers.
The case is Apple Inc. v. Motorola Inc., 11-cv-08540, U.S. District Court, Northern District of
Illinois (Chicago).