The ongoing legal battle between Apple and Samsung shows no sign of abating and last night, U.S. District Court Judge Lucy Koh issued a ruling that denied Samsung a new trial over the 'bounce-back' patent, reports CNET.
Apple originally accused more than 20 Samsung smartphones and tablets of infringing on its 'bounce-back' patent, which was filed back in December 2007. The patent, No. 7,469,381 entitled "List scrolling and document translation, scaling, and rotation on a touch-screen display", meant that users who had scrolled to the top or bottom of a screen or document would be shown "an area beyond the edge of the document", colloquially known as a 'bounce-back' or 'rubber band', which is integrated into the device's operating system.
The patent had faced potential invalidation upon reexamination by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, but the key claim of the patent used against Samsung was ultimately upheld.
Similar implementations of the feature were implemented on a number of non-Apple devices, with Apple targeting Samsung for infringement of the patent. The patent in question also covers other device actions, such as dragging documents around the screen.
Although Apple was preliminarily awarded around $1.05 billion in damages due to copyright infringement, this amount was reduced by almost half back in March when Samsung called for a new trial to set revised damage amounts, which will commence in November of this year. Samsung had also sought to delay that new trial, but as noted by FOSS Patents, Judge Koh also denied that motion yesterday.
Neither Apple nor Samsung have provided any comment on this decision.
Top Rated Comments
Uh, Samsung didn't stop, the judge did.
one photo = to a 1000 words (but I'll add a few more here).
Samsung copied Sony and Panasonic for years, then moved on to copy Apple.
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Innovation for Fandroids:
- Make the screen twice the size (iPad-sized for a phone... why didn't Apple think about that.)
- Add an 8-core CPU and boast about how it's twice as fast as Apple's dual-core CPU, and sucks the battery down to < half a day of idle usage. (Maybe a reason why Apple opted for dual-core... performance/power consumption ratio... naaaah!)
- Double the battery size (as required to power the big screen + 8-core CPU.)
- Add brand-labelling/lagware to Google's copy of iOS and install it.
Apple's struggling to keep up with the innovation. I don't think they'll EVER be able to implement the above features. */SARCASM*
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Apple certainly should and indeed does work at producing better products.
But why should they allow a competitor to steal their innovation? They do their best to teach Samsung that stealing isn't on, and if they succeeded (in teaching Samsung some moral values), that would stop future lawsuits.
And when will Samesong start "innovating"? Ah, there is nothing to copy right now? I'm sure they have engineers on standby waiting for next apple product announcement/leak.