Motorola Androids Banned in the U.S.; Samsung May be the Last Survivor

From DailyTech: This time the ban -- set in place by the U.S. International Trade Commission and scheduled to be enforced by U.S. Customs in 60 days -- is on Motorola Mobility Inc.'s (MMI) handsets and comes courtesy of Microsoft Corp. (MSFT). The new ban from the U.S. International Trade Commission comes just weeks after U.S. Customs began to enforce a punitive and sweeping ban on imports of HTC Corp. (TPE:2498) Android handsets, sending the phonemaker's shares plunging.

After being slapped with an unfavorable preliminary ruling late last year, the official ruling found that Motorola infringed on one patent -- U.S. Patent No. 6,370,566 -- which covers scheduling meetings.

Much like the ruling against HTC this is a seemingly trivial item; one that Motorola and Android operating system developer Google Inc. (GOOG) could easily work around. The big question is whether a workaround will do anything to prevent a ban.

After all, HTC removed all infringing features from its phones months ago, but U.S. Customs inexplicably opted to seize all its products anyways. A month has gone by with no indication from customs when they are going to bother to review the handset shipments to confirm that the infringing features are gone, allowing them to be released to market.

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