Apple wins Motorola injunction over gallery scrolling
Apple has won another patent-related injunction against Motorola in Germany, this time over a photo-gallery function in Motorola's Android phones.
However, Motorola says it has already worked round the function in question, so it is unaffected by the Munich regional court ruling on Thursday. The patent infringement related specifically to a scrolling animation used in the zoomed-in view.
"We note that the court ruled that performing the functions in a 'zoomed-out' mode does not infringe on this patent," Motorola said in a statement. "We expect no impact to supply or future sales as we have already implemented a new way to view photos on our products that does not interfere with the user experience."
The case was the latest in a seemingly endless stream of confrontations between Apple and various Android manufacturers in the German courts. Apple won an injunction based on infringement of a slide-to-unlock feature in mid-February, but again Motorola said it had already worked round the patent.
Apple lost a case against Motorola based on GPRS patents in December. Early last month, Motorola briefly succeeded in getting Apple iPads and iPhones banned from sale in Germany, on that occasion over 3G patents.
In a case relating to push-messaging functionality, Motorola has also managed to get Apple to disable the feature for its mobile iCloud and MobileMe customers in the country.
Meanwhile, in a continuation of Apple's long-running German battle with Samsung, the Mannheim regional court threw out one of Apple's two slide-to-unlock motions against its Korean rival. At the same time on Friday, the court also dismissed a 3G-related Samsung lawsuit against Apple.
According to FOSS Patents, Samsung's dismissed suit was yet again about standards-essential patents. The EU's antitrust regulators are already investigating Samsung over its tactics around patents that are supposed to be licensed on a fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) basis.
Apple has also complained to the regulators over the way Motorola handles FRAND licensing. Apple says it disagrees with the tactic of using standards-essential patents as legal ammunition, and says Motorola's royalty claims of 2.25 percent of the entire device's sale price are excessive.