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.
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