The Mannheim Regional Court in Germany has postponed a ruling on the Apple-Motorola lawsuit, according to "FOSS Patents" (http://macte.ch/FvKoY). The decision concerning Motorola will now come down on the same day as the one on the Samsung case -- in three weeks.

"There can be situations in which the same patent targeting the same technology -- in this case, we're talking about the Android operating system itself -- is adjudged differently by the same court in parallel lawsuits involving different defendants," Florian Mueller writes for "FOSS Patents." "For example, one party may fail to bring certain infringement or invalidity contentions in time. But based on how those two trials went, there is no obvious reason why the two cases might have different outcomes. And the consistent outcome is more likely than not to be a finding of non-infringement."

All this is part of an ongoing battle between the two companies. Apple has previously alleged that Motorola infringes 24 of its patents (21 of them with Android-based phones, the remaining three with set-top boxes and DVRs), while Motorola previously asserted 18 patents against a variety of Apple products (mostly but not exclusively iPhone, iPad and iPod). Litigation between the two companies has taken place in several different federal courts.

In November 2010 Apple sued Motorola, alleging that the company's smartphone lineup and the operating software it uses infringe on the iPhone-maker's intellectual property. The two lawsuits came after Motorola sued Apple in October 2010 for patent infringement. Motorola claims that Apple's iPhone, iPad, iPod touch and certain Mac computers infringe Motorola patents.