“Apple scored a strategically important legal victory on Wednesday that could have enormous impact on Apple’s patent assertions against Android,” Florian Mueller reports for FOSS Patents. “The order… came down in litigation between Apple and Motorola, but the issue is also relevant to Apple’s spat with HTC and could play a very important role in Apple’s dispute with Samsung as well as its dealings with any other Android device makers in the future.”
“In a federal litigation with Motorola in the Northern District of Illinois, an extremely influential, high-ranking U.S. judge agreed with Apple’s interpretation of the most important term, ‘realtime API,’ in its ‘263 patent,'” Mueller reports. “Under this interpretation, Android most likely infringes on the patent, and a workaround appears difficult to say the least. I published the original infringement claim chart from Apple’s complaint against HTC and Apple’s allegation, based on this patent, that Andy Rubin got the inspiration for Android while working at Apple (which might enable Apple at some point to have Google found liable for willful infringement).”
“In my opinion, a jury is very likely to find Android to infringe the patent based on that construction but much less likely to deem the patent invalid (unless someone comes up with better invalidity contentions than HTC did, presumably with help from Google),” Mueller reports. “The Apple v. Motorola litigation in Chicago is going to be the next occasion on which this patent is asserted against Android at trial (probably in the summer). With Google hoping to close its acquisition of Motorola Mobility in the near term, that dispute is going to be very important in and of itself. But the high profile of the judge who entered and signed the above order lends it importance beyond that particular dispute.”
Mueller reports, “You can read about United States Circuit Judge Richard A. Posner on Wikipedia. According to the Journal of Legal Studies, he was the most-cited legal scholar in United States in the 20th century.”
Much more in the full article – recommended – here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Joe Architect” for the heads up.]