Google’s Motorola Mobility withdraws a patent-infringement suit against Apple

Google's Motorola Mobility unit has withdrawn a patent-infringement suit filed against its arch rival Apple with the US International Trade Commission (ITC).

In a filing with the ITC on Monday, Motorola Mobility said it has not settled the suit with Apple but was withdrawing the complaint without prejudice. The complaint however can be re-submitted.

Motorola Mobility did not give reasons for withdrawing its suit, but said in the filing that the move was not due to any "agreements between Motorola and Apple, written or oral, express or implied."

In August, Motorola Mobility filed a complaint with the ITC alleging that Apple devices such as the iPhone and iPad had infringed seven of its patents, including patents on features like interactive voice commands, location reminders, e-mail notification and phone/video players.

The suit is among the several where Google has filed patent infringement complaints against Apple through its May acquisition of Motorola Mobility. The companies are also fighting patent lawsuits in courts in the US and Europe.

Florian Mueller, who writes about patent cases between global telecommunication giants in a blogpost, said that he believes that Google withdrew the complaint so as to prevent the ITC from consolidating this suit with an earlier complaint, where ITC had said in a preliminary ruling that Apple had infringed on a noise elimination patent.