Apple recently won a lawsuit in the US where they were awarded more than $1 billion in damages against Samsung, and just a day after the announcement of Apple’s new iPhone 5, they have won another patent injunction, this time against Google’s Motorola in Germany.
Florian Mueller from Foss Patents has been following the trial in Germany, and he explains what this new ruling means for both Motorola and Apple.
At the Munich I Regional Court, Presiding Judge Dr. Peter Guntz announced his panel’s decision, which had been pushed back by five weeks, on an Apple v. Motorola Mobility lawsuit over the “overscroll bounce”, or “rubber-banding”, patent. The accused Motorola Mobility tablets and smartphones were all found to infringe EP2126678 on “list scrolling and document translation, scaling, and rotation on a touch-screen display”, the European equivalent of U.S. Patent No. 7,469,381.
Apple can enforce a Germany-wide permanent (but appealable and, therefore, preliminarily-enforceable) injunction now by posting a 25 million bond (or making a deposit of the same amount), which it undoubtedly will. Motoorla doesn’t have to look far for a workaround: stock Android (the version of Android that Google makes available for download) comes with a glow effect instead of the overscroll bounce. Samsung’s current devices also have a blue glow. But the glow does not solve the problem that the rubber-banding patent solves: by the time a user notices the glow, he or she has already instinctively pressed harder because of the impression that the device is not responding. This injunction spells further degradation of the Android user experience.
Head on over to Foss Patents for more details on this new ruling against Motorola in Germany.
Latest Geeky Gadgets Deals
Disclosure: Some of our articles include affiliate links. If you buy something through one of these links, Geeky Gadgets may earn an affiliate commission. Learn about our Disclosure Policy.