AppleInsider Staff
A Tokyo court on Friday ruled a number of Samsung's legacy smartphone models infringe on Apple's so-called "rubber-banding" or "bounce-back" patent, a hotly-contested property in the companies' ongoing worldwide patent struggle.
The Japan court found older versions of Samsung's smartphone user interface, which have since been modified to avoid litigation, mimicked a unique scrolling behavior patented by Apple, reports Reuters.
Specifically, Samsung infringed on Apple's "rubber-banding" feature that triggers a "bounce-back" animation when a user scrolls to the end of a digital document. The property is designed to give feedback when navigating a web page other digital asset, adding to the carefully crafted user experience offered by iOS.
As noted previously, Samsung has changed the offending action in its latest products, adding a blue line to demarcate the end of a document.
The patent is still a bone of contention in the Apple v. Samsung post-trial proceedings, as the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in April found the property invalid. More recently, however, the USPTO validated a few key claims in the patent, including "Claim 19," which Apple successfully leveraged against a number of Samsung products in last year's high-profile jury trial.
Further details regarding the Tokyo court's decision will be announced when the final ruling is handed down later today.
Christine McKee
Andrew Orr
Charles Martin
Marko Zivkovic
Wesley Hilliard
36 Comments
Hi Samsung, How's your f*cking year going? :D Love, GTR
The problem with patent litigation is that everything takes too long. By the time a judgement is finally made the damage has been irreparably done and the pay out, no matter how large can not undo the lost sales/traction that your product had.
I hope Sacamsung don't bounce back from this.
[quote name="saarek" url="/t/158171/tokyo-court-finds-samsung-infringed-on-apples-rubber-banding-patent#post_2350286"]The problem with patent litigation is that everything takes too long. By the time a judgement is finally made the damage has been irreparably done and the pay out, no matter how large can not undo the lost sales/traction that your product had. [/quote] That is what what happened when Microsoft purloined the first Mac OS.
[quote name="saarek" url="/t/158171/tokyo-court-finds-samsung-infringed-on-apples-rubber-banding-patent#post_2350286"]The problem with patent litigation is that everything takes too long. By the time a judgement is finally made the damage has been irreparably done and the pay out, no matter how large can not undo the lost sales/traction that your product had. [/quote] Generally speaking I agree but I don't for a minute believe that Apple lost a single sale because Samsung phones had rubber banding.