The European Commission is weighing whether or not to investigate Motorola for patent abuse, according to the organization's vice president.

During a Friday speech in Washington, D.C., commission vice president Joaquin Almunia said it is "unacceptable" for owners of smartphone-related essential patents to "effectively hold up the entire industry with the threat of banning the products of competitors from the market."

Almunia pointed to the EU's ongoing investigation of Samsung, which will "make sure that the company has not failed to honor the commitments it [made] back in 1998 to make its standard-essential patents for mobile phones available in fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory terms," he said.

But Samsung is not the only company the commission is monitoring.

"We have also received similar complaints by Apple and Microsoft against Motorola," Almunia said. "I am considering whether we need to investigate these complaints formally to help bring more clarity into this area of competition control."

Blocking competitors "defeats the very purpose of the patent system, which is to reward invention and stimulate innovation," Almunia said.

At issue is something known as FRAND (fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory) licensing obligations, which are intended to keep major corporations in check and avoid abusive patent-related behavior. Basically, if a company holds a patent on a technology that is essential to a particular industry, they should make every effort to license that technology, even to major rivals.

Microsoft filed its complaint against Motorola (and its almost-owner Google) with the commission last month. "We have taken this step because Motorola is attempting to block sales of Windows PCs, our Xbox game console and other products," Dave Heiner, vice president and deputy general counsel at Microsoft, said at the time. "Their offense? These products enable people to view videos on the Web and to connect wirelessly to the Internet using industry standards."

Bloomberg reported today that Motorola demanded $4 billion per year in royalty payments from Microsoft related to its Xbox console.

Also last month, Apple asked a European standards body to come up with basic rules for how it handles licensing of wireless standard patents.