Google is facing a fair share of legal trouble, a big portion coming from the Oracle case that’s been heating up recently. Microsoft in turn is being pursued by Motorola over alleged patent infringement, the Android OEM the search acquired last year for a sum well exceeding $10 billion.

Ironically one of the reasons cited at the time was the sheer size of Motorola’s patent portfolio, which Google thought would be a good way of shielding it from such suits.

The allegations are that Microsoft illegally uses several technologies that the manufacturer holds rights to; standard-essential patents to be more exact. That’s the type that Microsoft and Apple have pledged not to fuss over, and they’re even leading an active campaign encouraging peers in the industry to follow suit (pun intended).

Motorola is demanding royalties of 2.25 percent on all retail merchandise., which adds up to $4 billion a year. The news is that Microsoft is countering this demand by claiming that the offer is ‘unfair,’ a response that, if accepted, could make things a lot easier for the OS juggernaut.

“It could take a lot off the table,” said Michael Carrier, a professor at Rutgers Law School in Camden, New Jersey, who specializes in intellectual property and antitrust issues. “It could affect what’s going on in both the courts and the agencies.”

While all this is going on, Microsoft is seeking to mitigate some of its licensing-related overhead by cooperating with VLC.  The latter is the French company behind the popular free video player, which is already being optimized for Windows 8.

It’s not just Windows 8 that will be stirring a lot of buzz; the next version of Hyper-V will probably be just as big of a sensation, according to our own John Casaretto.