Microsoft, Google Patent Fight Rests on Defining Fairness

A federal judge’s ruling last week that Google Inc. can’t wield some patents to block the sale of Microsoft Corp. products may point toward resolution of a fundamental question underlying the global smartphone wars -- what constitutes a fair and reasonable royalty?

In cases across the U.S. and Europe, Google, Microsoft and other companies are battling over the power of patents used in industrywide standards for technologies, such as Wi-Fi, that let competing products work together. Patent owners who help set those specifications pledge to license their inventions on “fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory terms.”