The International Trade Commission has announced that it will begin a formal investigation into Motorola’s (read Google) complaint against Apple. Motorola is accusing Apple of breaching seven patents related to location based reminders, Siri, push email notifications and media playback. According the ITC website, no decision has been decided on the case and the announcement is merely to discuss the beginning of a formal investigation:

The U.S. International Trade Commission has voted to institute an investigation of certain wireless communication devices, portable music and data processing devices, computers, and components thereof. The products at issue in this investigation are certain Apple iPhones, iPods, iPads, and Apple personal computers.

If the ITC were to find Apple guilty of infringing on Motorola’s patents, now owned by Google, the decision could lead to a sales ban on all Apple MAC, iPhone and iPad products in the United States. Motorola discussed their wish to settle the matters out of court, but has said they found Apple an unwilling partner in mediated settlements:

“We would like to settle these patent matters, but Apple’s unwillingness to work out a license leaves us little choice but to defend ourselves and our engineers’ innovations.”

Can we be done with these lawsuits already?

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