Court rules that Motorola Mobility did not violate Fujifilm’s facial recognition patents

The U.S. District Court for the California Northern District ruled that Motorola Mobility did not infringe on Fujifilm Corp’s patented facial recognition technology, according to a report by Reuters.

However, the San Francisco jury ordered Motorola to pay $10.2 million in damages for integrating Fujifilm Corp’s patented technology that converts color images to monochrome, in its smartphones without Fujifilm’s consent.

Motorola successfully proved in the trial that the disputed patents, which included two on face recognition and one on wifi-bluetooth, were invalid.

Fujifilm Corp initially sued Motorola in 2012, in which it alleged that the smartphone manufacturer infringed three of its patents on digital camera functions and a fourth patent relating to sending data via a wireless connection such as Bluetooth.

The damages awarded to Fujifilm Corp. fell short of the $40 million figure Fujifilm had initially sought while going into the trial in front of the U.S. District Court for the California Northern District, which started on April 20.

“We are pleased with the verdict related to three out of the four patents and are evaluating our options on the one patent on which we did not prevail,” Motorola spokesman William Moss said in an email.

In its defence, Motorola argued the Fujifilm patents should be disregarded as they were not new or they were obvious compared to previously patented inventions.

Additionally, Motorola argued it already had a license to Bluetooth technology.

Article Topics

biometrics  |  lawsuit  |  patents