Xbox 360 banned in Germany

 Gavin Mannion

So just a few weeks after a court in America ruled in Motorola’s favour in a case that could lead to the blocking of Xbox sales in America the same has now happened in that bastion of censorship and sausages, Germany.
Motorola Mobility has been granted an injunction by a German court against Microsoft prohibiting the distribution and sale of the Xbox 360 and Windows 7 after agreeing that Microsoft had infringed upon 2 H.264 codec patents.

Luckily for Microsoft a court in Seattle, America, had already ruled in Microsoft’s favour and placing a restraining order on Motorola after Microsoft claimed it was abusing its Frand commitments.
The Frand promise is a promise to licence innovation under fair and reasonable terms when said innovation is critical to widely-used technologies.

Or in other words, if the patent is used by pretty much everyone and is now common knowledge you can’t suddenly demand $4 Billion a year to use it.
So yes the sale and distribution of the Xbox 360 has now been banned in Germany but that ban is currently being withheld due to another ruling in a Seattle court, while at the same time a Washington board is being put together to investigate a possible ban in America for the same offence.