Just yesterday we reported the USPTO has ruled Apple’s “Rubber-band” patent invalid, as well as Apple losing their appeal in the UK. It appears apple could now be fighting a losing battle. Now a Dutch court has ruled that Samsung did not infringe on Apple’s multi-touch patent that refers to some multi-touch features. The court said: “Today’s verdict follows similar rulings in the UK and Germany on the touchscreen patents.”
The feature most fought over was the ability for smartphone users to push two buttons on the screen at the same time. A loss over this patent would have meant big issues for Android and its games. Apple was arguing that Android was using their patented technology to disable parts of the screen to avoid unwanted touch events. However, Samsung fired back stating that Apple and iOS disables parts of the touchscreen by making each object on the screen its own element on the user interface, which gives the developer the option to tell what elements will be sensitive to touch events. Samsung and Android uses a more hierarchical system that doesn’t apply to just one element.
With this in mind Samsung said that they didn’t infringe on Apple’s patents because of the different technology used. The Judges added that because of this the touch events “do not fall under the protection of the scope of this patent.” Apple has been ordered to pay the legal cost the judges also said. Samsung’s cost alone already exceeds $422,000USD, proving this to be a sizable lost for Apple.
This isn’t the first time Apple has lost to Samsung in the Dutch court system. One thing’s for sure, we are far from over in this long drawn out court battle between Samsung and Apple.