Tuesday, October 23, 2012

US patent office prepares to kill off Apple patent



 From theregister.com: The US Patent Office appears to have provisionally invalidated one of the major patents that Apple was using against Samsung... And it's possible that large parts of the case will go “kablooie” as a result.

Everyone will remember that the Cupertinians were most insistent that the “bounce back scrolling” thing was a terribly important innovation which Samsung had heinously and horribly copied. It seemed to have further held that this led to some part of Sammy's success and that Apple was therefore due the output of a small nation or two in damages.  However, as Florian Mueller has uncovered that's not quite the way the land lies now.

The United States Patent and Trademark Office has good news for Samsung, and Samsung has already shared it with Judge Koh in a late-night filing. In a "non-final" Office action the USPTO has declared all 20 claims of Apple's rubber-banding patent (US Patent No, 7,469,381 invalid, including claim 19, which Apple successfully asserted against Samsung in the summer trial in California. In fact, claim 19 is one of several claims to be deemed invalid for two reasons, either one of which would be sufficient on its own…


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