Today a yard in Mannheim, Germany, decided that an action brought by Samsung against the Apple company is without legal support and it rejected it without giving reasons on the spot. Also today, the same court held a meeting in which to talk about a request from the Apple company that claims that the Samsung Galaxy Nexus infringes a "utility" patent for the slide to unlock system. This is not the first time that Apple accuses an Android terminal manufacturer of infringing this patent, but it probably won't be the last, although the company has not won a case in its defense so far.
A few hours after pronouncing a ruling on one of Samsung's numerous lawsuits against Apple, the Mannheim Regional Court held a hearing on one of Apple's many infringement lawsuits against Samsung. Today's hearing relates to a Gebrauchsmuster ("utility model"), which is an intellectual property right that could be vaguely described as a fast-track patent that comes with various limitations. Companies are free to file for patents and utility models on the same invention (or on closely related inventions), and that's what Apple did with its ever-more-famous slide-to-unlock image invention.
This is just one of the processes that Apple currently has with those from Samsung and I for one hope that in the end the two companies will find a common point and decide to give up the legal battles in which they are caught because no one he has nothing to gain from them.
