Upholding an earlier order by a Seattle judge, in the Microsoft-Motorola patent dispute, a three-judge panel in San Francisco recently ruled that Motorola Mobility - which is owned by Google - is not in a position to enforce a German court's injunction order against Microsoft.

According to a Bloomberg report, Motorola lost appeal in the Microsoft Xbox case when the federal appeals panel in San Francisco said that the Seattle court order was appropriately tailored; and thus blocked Motorola's enforcement of the sales ban against Microsoft.

At their respective Wednesday, September 5, events in New York, handset-makers Nokia and Motorola unveiled as many as five new smartphones, underscoring their attempts to gain some market share in a smartphone-market scenario dominated by Apple and Samsung.

Nokia, at its event, introduced two new colorful, Windows 8-based Lumia handsets - Lumia 920 4G LTE and Lumia 820 - which boast some extremely attractive features, like wireless charging and augmented reality technology that enables the users to comprehensively view their surroundings with the help of the device's camera.

In a decision which reduces the chances of an import ban being imposed on the Apple iPhone, the US International Trade Commission (ITC) said that Apple did not violate two industry-standard `wireless technology' patents owned by Google's newly-acquired Motorola Mobility division.

Within months of its $12.5 billion acquisition of Motorola Mobility, Internet search titan Google revealed in an August 13 announcement that it is slashing 20 percent of the workforce - that is, nearly 4,000 jobs - at its Motorola Mobility division.

Announcing its decision to cut job at its Motorola Mobility unit in a regulatory filing on Monday, Google said that almost two-thirds of the job-cuts will affect the company's employees outside the US; with around 160 workers at Motorola's Sunnyvale plant also to be affected by the move.

In a decision which probably marks the culmination of a two-year-long patent-infringement dispute between Apple and Motorola, Judge Richard Posner - who is sitting by designation on the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois - has tossed away Apple's smartphone patent claims against Motorola, on Friday.

In a recent statement, Microsoft has revealed that it has brushed aside a patent settlement offer by Motorola - which has been acquired by Google - in disputes which are threatening to stall the US imports of Android-based devices and Xbox game consoles.

The patent-infringement scuffle between Microsoft and Motorola chiefly pertain to Microsoft's ActiveSync technology, which facilitates the automatic calendar updating process on some Android handsets.

The Apple-Motorola patent lawsuit witnessed an unexpected turn on Thursday, when Judge Richard A. Posner of the Northern District of Illinois coming up with a rather surprising decision of granting a next week - June 20 - hearing, which will give both the companies a chance to put forth their arguments for an injunction order.

At the hearing, the judge will ascertain whether Apple is entitled to injunctive relief for patent infringement by Google's Motorola division; and also if it would be possible for Motorola to seek similar relief for one single instance of patent violation by Apple.

Google Inc. on Tuesday completed its ambitious $12.5 billion Motorola Mobility deal, a move that will help the Internet search giant enter deeper into the mobile gadgets business.

The acquisition of Motorola is Google's most expensive and riskiest deal in its fourteen-year history. The deal was announced nine months back, when Google openly announced that it wanted to stretch its feet into the hardware business.

Google entered the cellphone market four years back with the release of its Android software, which currently runs on millions of mobile devices from a number of manufacturers.

The Motorola Droid 4 handset – which is available in the US from Verizon Wireless on the carrier’s 4GLTE network - is Motorola’s most recent offering in its keyboard-toting Droid lineup; and marks the company’s notably ambitious attempt at creating an adjunct desktop-in-the-pocket with its beefy hardware.

One of the key selling points of the new Droid 4 – priced at $200 with a two-year contract on Verizon – is what Motorola has described as the handset’s “anywhere office" connectivity which would enable the users to carry their work with them.

In what apparently is the latest development in terms of the ongoing legal scuffles between smartphone makers, Apple filed a lawsuit against Motorola Mobility in the US District Court, Southern District of California.

Apple has taken the legal route against Motorola – the two companies are already fighting a legal battle in Germany – in the US, accusing Motorola not for violating Apple’s own patented technology, but for breaching a contract pertaining to Motorola’s own IP, which Qualcomm uses in its MDM6610 baseband processors.

Intensified competition in the smartphone arena has resulted in Motorola Mobility’s $80 million loss in the fourth quarter, with the disappointing quarterly results further aggravated by merger costs linked to Google’s proposed $12.5 billion takeover of the company.

Motorola Mobility’s Thursday reporting of its 2011 fourth quarter and full-year results revealed that even though the yearly revenue for the company witnessed a marginal rise, the year-on-year earnings during the fourth quarter plunged because of poor device sales as well as high operating costs.

While Apple's and Samsung saw their US market shares increasing in the three months to November 11, LG, Motorola and RIM suffered continued to decline.

According to market research firm ComScore, Apple's market share in the US jumped the most from the previous three months, i. e. 1.4 per cent, to grab 11.2 per cent of the market share. With that much share, the Cupertino, Calif.-based gadgets maker stood at fourth position.

The Chief Executive of Nokia, Stephen Elop claimed that concerns over Google’s forecast to buy Motorola for $12.5 billion can be justified and said that the move toughened the grounds for Nokia's agreement with Microsoft.

Following the period of differences between Motorola and Sprint for the past two years, both the companies are now reported to have come back together with a new project of which the maiden outcome is the Photon 4G smart-phone which runs on Android. They declare that they will be launching nearly about 10 other cell phones also before this year comes to a finish.

As per the internal documents that have come to media, Motorola's Droid X2 is going to be launched by May 26. It is going to be part of Motorola's Droid X2, which is one of Verizon's most popular Android phones.

It has also been said that Droid X2 is going to be available by direct fulfillment which would be starting from May 19, as was reported by Android Central and Droid-Life. However, no word as to how much price is going to be charged for the phone has been told by them.