“After the billion-dollar California verdict against Samsung, and one day after the launch of the iPhone 5, Apple just dealt Google and its Android ecosystem the next significant blow,” Florian Mueller reports for FOSS Patents.
“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,” Mueller reports. “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.”
Mueller reports, “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. Motorola 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.”
MacDailyNews Take: Let’s be perfectly clear here: It’s only “degradation” because of those companies who decided to overstep legal bounds and deploy Apple’s intellectual property in their products. It’s their fault the Android settlers’ experience is “degraded,” not Apple’s. It’s what Android would’ve been had Samsung, Motorola Mobility et al. not decided to break the law for profit by infringing upon Apple’s patented intellectual property.
Mueller reports, “If Apple posts another 10 million euros, it can also obligate Motorola to destroy any infringing material, and for yet another 10 million euros it can get a recall. Furthermore, Motorola was held to owe Apple damages for past infringement. But Google will definitely appeal the decision to the Munich Higher Regional Court, and additionally it will keep pursuing its opposition to the grant of this patent by the European Patent Office… Android has far bigger patent infringement problems than any piece of computer software has ever had in the history of the industry, and this has many of Google’s hardware partners profoundly concerned… There can be no confusion about the fact that Google is losing the smartphone patent war in the United States and in Europe.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Please let the sweet justice keep flowing!
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Florian Mueller” for the heads up.]
