“The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has rejected claims of an Apple patent that figures prominently in a patent infringement lawsuit against Samsung Electronics, according to documents filed by the South Korean company in a U.S. federal court,” John Ribeiro reports for IDG News Service.
“The 21 claims of the patent were rejected by the USPTO in a ‘final office action,’ as they were anticipated by previous patents or unpatentable. Known as the “pinch-to-zoom” patent, it covers the ability to distinguish between the scrolling movement of one finger and two-fingers gestures like pinch-to-zoom on a touch-screen to activate certain functions,” Ribeiro reports. “Apple has up to two months to respond to the USPTO decision. In a filing in April after USPTO rejected multiple claims of another patent in a similar final office action, Apple said it had further options, including appeal to the Patent Trial and Appeal Board and seeking judicial review.”
Ribeiro reports, “The USPTO rejected in April multiple claims of another patent that figured in the lawsuit, known as “overscroll bounce” patent. Apple, however, said in a filing that the reexamination is not finished, and it is entitled to file a response to the action which may result in a withdrawal of the rejection or certification of the claims under reexamination.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: It’s “final,” but not really final, and that’s our final answer.
Florian Müller reports for FOSS Patents, “I put ‘final’ in quotes and said ‘not really final’ in the headline because one can easily get confused by the terminology in U.S. patent reexaminations. Most of the time that you hear about ‘final’ in connection with a reexamination, the way to look at it is a famous Churchill quote: ‘Victory is never final, defeat is never fatal, courage is all that matters.’ And courage is not in short supply at Apple and Samsung.”
Müller reports, “In this case, the ‘final’ Office action is merely the second decision in a process that would take years (until mid-2017 or later) unless Apple successfully defends the patent before all appeals have been exhausted.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]
Related articles:
Huge win for Apple at USPTO: Key claims of rubber-banding patent confirmed – June 13, 2013
Apple to Samsung: Our U.S. multi-touch patents won’t be truly invalidated until mid-2017 or later, if ever – April 17, 2013
USPTO tentatively – and likely temporarily – declares Apple’s ‘pinch-to-zoom’ patent invalid – December 20, 2012