In the lawsuits with Motorola and HTC, Apple invoked a patent that contained a description of a technology known as realtime API. Apple claims that Andy Rubin, the father of Android, worked under the command of the engineers who developed that technology during the 90s at Apple and that he would have used the knowledge gained at that time to implement the technology in Android even though he had no right to do this. Although Apple has until recently failed to get a judge to recognize its interpretation of the '263 patent's realtime API technology, on Wednesday an Illinois judge did offering to those from Apple a possible extremely important victory in the trial against Android.
In a federal litigation with Motorola in the Northern District of Illinois, an extremely influential, high-ranking US judge agreed with Apple's interpretation of the most important term, "realtime API", in its '263 patent. Under this interpretation, Android most likely infringes on the patent, and a workaround appears difficult to say the least.
The victory was obtained in a lawsuit against the Motorola company, but we are talking about a technology available in all Android terminals, so Apple could invoke it again in other pending lawsuits. If Apple manages to convince other judges that its interpretation of the '263 patent and the realtime API is correct, then it may be necessary to remove many Android terminals from the market because Google would have to fundamentally modify the Android OS in order not to infringe Apple's patent.
