A judge at the U.S. International Trade Commission has ruled that Microsoft's Xbox videogame consoles should face a U.S. import and sales ban for violating four patents owned by Motorola Mobility, which was just purchased Tuesday by Google.

ITC Administrative Law Judge David Shaw decided in April that the Xbox has violated four Motorola patents that pertain to the H.264 video compression codec and wireless technologies used in both gaming controllers and consoles. Last month, in deciding that the Xbox was violating Motorola's patents, Shaw made no recommendation to halt Xbox sales or imports. In the court document, released to the public on Monday, that changed and Shaw recommended the bans.

The ruling adds to the growing and increasingly petty patent fights between the world's largest electronics makers and online software companies, which is leading to billion-dollar stockpiles of patents, a drawn-out lawsuit between Oracle and Google that threatens to ruin APIs, and HTC's flagship smartphone being quarantined over how it handles a user clicking on phone numbers in an e-mail.

Officials at Motorola Mobility were unavailable for comment by press time, while Microsoft directed Wired to a statement it made last month on the ITC case. "The recommendation by the administrative law judge is the first step in the process leading to the Commission's final ruling," Microsoft said. "We remain confident the Commission will ultimately rule in Microsoft's favor in this case."

It's worth noting that Microsoft and Motorola's Xbox patent battle is also being waged in Germany and a Seattle federal court. While it's unclear how these court battles could affect the ITC's position, the entire mass of litigation is clearly a work in progress.

In the ITC court filing, Shaw said that Motorola asked for a full ban on the import and sales of Xbox gaming consoles and accessories in the United States, along with a fine placed on Microsoft that is equal to the value of all the Xbox consoles sold in the U.S.

Microsoft, Shaw said in the filing, argued that banning the Xbox would be "contrary to the public interest" as such a move would leave U.S. consumers with just two choices for gaming consoles – the Sony PlayStation and the Nintendo Wii. Shaw disagreed, deciding that the public interest in enforcing intellectual property rights outweighed giving consumers the choice of buying an Xbox.

But while the ITC has sided with Motorola Mobility on this matter so far, the Xbox is not yet officially banned and it won't be leaving store shelves any time too soon.

Shaw's ruling is now headed to the ITC's six-member board of commissioners, which has a deadline of Aug. 23 to make any changes to the ruling or throw it out altogether. If the ITC commission agrees with Shaw's verdict, it would then go to the Obama Administration for a 60-day review period in which the President could either sign-off or overturn the commission's decision.

The Xbox is one of Microsoft's most successful products and the timing of the ruiling comes with a bit of irony. On Monday the ITC commission awarded Microsoft a sales and important ban on all Motorola smartphones and tablets – a decision that is also headed to the Obama administration for presidential review before going into effect. And on Tuesday, Google announced it had been fully cleared to buy Motorola for $12.5 billion – establishing a new front in the battle between the tech giants.

While the Xbox is big business for Microsoft, phones and tablets are just about the entirety of Motorola Mobility's business. The two separate ITC decisions could potentially result in major losses for both Microsoft and Motorola Mobility,

If the idea of no Motorola phones and no Xboxes sounds like a gadget-geek nightmare to you, take some comfort in the fact that there is still some time for the two companies to settle the two respective complaints and license each other's patents.