Motorola wants the Xbox banned

A US TRADE AGENCY is mulling over whether the Microsoft Xbox gaming system should be banned from US shores after Motorola said that it infringes patents.

The International Trade Commission (ITC) in Washington, DC has announced that it is investigating the complaint filed last month by Motorola Mobility.

Bloomberg  has pointed out that this is a shot back at the Vole, which filed a lawsuit on November 9 accusing Motorola of breaching contractual obligations to fairly license patents on wireless networking and video coding to be used in the Xbox.

The next day Motorola filed patent infringement complaints in Florida and Wisconsin.

Microsoft claims that Motorola is demanding patent royalties that are "wholly disproportionate". Motorola has said the demand was fair so the Vole should write a cheque and stop moaning.

The ITC investigates allegations of unfair trade practices and has the power to ban imports of products found to infringe US patents. It takes about 15 months to complete the process, by which time the opposing sides usually have sorted things out. µ