“This morning, the Mannheim Regional Court stayed Apple’s German lawsuit against Samsung over the photo gallery page-flipping patent (EP2059868 on a ‘portable electronic device for photo management’) pending the resolution of a parallel nullity (invalidation) proceeding at the Federal Patent Court. I attended the announcement made by Judge Andreas Voss,” Florian Mueller reports for FOSS Patents.
“German regional courts stay patent infringement lawsuits only if a defendant shows a high probability (80%+) of the patent being invalidated,” Mueller reports. “Interestingly, this is a patent that Apple successfully enforced in the Netherlands last summer and in Munich (against Motorola) in March. While both Samsung and Motorola have been able to work around those rulings by settling for a less convenient photo gallery page-flipping solution, a win in Germany would still be of some tactical value to Apple (and entitle it to damages for past infringement, which is, however, a less than secondary consideration in the dispute between the number one and the number two in this industry).”
Mueller reports, “Basically, every successful enforcement helps to draw a line in the sand that restricts Google’s ability to imitate Apple’s user interface and functionality.”
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