The patent saga continues with U.S. Circuit Judge Richard A. Posner in Chicago ruling that Motorola and Google must provide Apple with information regarding Android development as well as information about the impending merger. It’s unclear exactly what specific “information” must be provided and while everyone goes ahead and assumes it’s some sort of top secret documentation, I’m betting it’s nothing of the sort and Apple won’t be gaining any trade secrets out of this. It’s all ridiculous and will only end as all of these patent suits have ended, with nothing more than a software update.

According to Apple, all of this information is pertinent to their patent lawsuit filed back in 2010 and revolves around six specific Apple patents. Motorola has since fired back with three of their own patent lawsuits and also opposes this latest decision stating:

“Google’s employees and documents are not within the ‘possession, custody, or control’ of Motorola, and Motorola cannot force Google to produce documents or witnesses over Google’s objections,”

This leads me to believe that the judge has ordered Motorola to get these documents from Google and has not ordered Google directly. This would of course make absolutely no sense as Motorola has nothing to do with the development of Android and perhaps that is something the judge does not fully understand. I’d love to find out what information is being requested as I can’t imagine Apple not already knowing everything about Android — an operating system that is open-sourced and freely available.

Just more fodder for the lawyers and their already over stuffed bellies. If you care about any of this, you can read more about it by following the source link below.

• SourceBloomberg