After last night's conference, the good news keeps coming for Apple because today a German judge granted him winning the case in a lawsuit filed against Motorola Mobility. The process is based on a patent for the "rubber-banding" system that stretches the menu items when a page ends. This patent has been successfully used against other Android terminal manufacturers until now, and Motorola is just a new victim of a system that Google did not replace in time in its Android OS.
At the Munich I Regional Court, Presiding Judge Dr. Peter Guntz announced his panel's decision, which had been pushed back by five weeks, on an Apple v. Motorola Mobility lawsuit over the "overscroll bounce", or "rubber-banding", patent . The accused Motorola Mobility tablets and smartphones were all found to infringe EP2126678 on "list scrolling and document translation, scaling, and rotation on a touch-screen display", the European equivalent of US Patent No. 7,469,381.
Today's decision allows Apple to remove Motorola's terminals from sale if it deposits a bond of 25 million dollars, but the sales ban would be temporary because Motorola can appeal against the decision. A few months ago, Motorola imposed a decision against Apple, forcing the company to prohibit iPhone owners from using the push function for emails synchronized with iCloud, and as revenge I think that Apple will now impose this decision against Motorola.
Apple can enforce a Germany-wide permanent (but appealable and, therefore, preliminarily-enforceable) injunction now by posting a 25 million bond (or making a deposit of the same amount), which it undoubtedly will. If it posts another 10 million euros, it can also oblige Motorola to destroy any infringing material, and for yet another 10 million euros it can get a recall. Furthermore, Motorola was held to owe Apple damages for past infringement.
Motorola may be forced to pay damages to Apple for infringing this patent, but everything is unclear for now because an appeal and a new decision will surely follow.
