US one step closer to devastating Xbox 360 ban

Options running out for Microsoft with ITC now one step away from prohibiting console sales, but verdict not yet enacted

Microsoft is feverishly trying to escape one of the most disastrous legal rulings imposed on the company in its thirty-seven-year history, after the International Trade Commission (ITC) was advised on Tuesday to ban the import and sale of Xbox systems in the United States.
Judge David Shaw said Microsoft should be handed a cease-and-desist order on sales of Xbox 360 Slim consoles across the country, as part of an increasingly complex and bitter legal dispute between the company and Motorola Mobility.

The legal war – fought in courtrooms in Germany, the US and an ITC panel – has proven to be extraordinarily expensive for both parties. A Seattle judge recently claimed that attorney fees already spent “could finance a small country”.
But Judge Shaw’s recommendation to the ITC now threatens to throw the Xbox US business into disarray.
He believes Microsoft should not only cease Xbox imports from China, as well as ban general sale of the console across the country, but also pay Motorola Mobility 7 per cent of the value of any unsold systems remaining in stores.

http://www.develop-online.net/news/4...g-Xbox-360-ban