In Germany, Apple filed a new lawsuit against Motorola a few weeks ago and it seems that the judges would incline to give profit to the cause of the company from Cupertino. A patent related to the UI of the application interface that displays galleries with images from a smartphone seems to be the technology on the basis of which Apple could win the case, but Motorola could quickly solve the problems in Android. A preliminary hearing was held in this trial a few days ago and the judges were inclined to give victory to the cause of Apple, but a final decision will only be made on February 16.
The ongoing smartphone patent war continues to be a war of attrition in which no decisive "knockout" blow is likely in the very near term, but Apple is making ever more progress forcing its competitors to modify their products in order to work around some of Apple's original ideas, which is what Steve Jobs wanted them to do. One of the next "trophies" in this regard may very well be handed to Apple by the Munich I Regional Court on February 16 in the form of an injunction against Motorola products that implement a certain method for flipping pages in a photo gallery in a way the court may find to infringe on EP2059868 (EP = European Patent).
We must not forget the fact that Motorola has the power to ban imports of Apple products in Europe thanks to a decision obtained at a court in Germany. For the time being, those from Motorola do not seem determined to take such a radical decision, but if Apple continues to harass them in the US and European courts, we might witness the first decision to ban the import of Apple products in Europe.
