Apple wins injunction against Motorola in Germany court

Apple won an injunction against Motorola Mobility on Thursday in a German court due to patent infringement in Motorola's smart phones and tablets. The patent at issue, EP2126788 which corresponds to US Patent No. 7,469,381, is for "rubber-banding" technology which allows users to continue scrolling beyond the end of a list and then have the list snap back. Its intent is to provide a more intuitive scrolling user interface. Apple can enforce an injunction throughout Germany if it posts a €25 million bond. If Apple posts an additional €10 million it can have all of the offending phones and tablets destroyed and if it posts another €10 million Apple can get a recall on Motorola's offending products. Motorola also must pay damages to Apple for its past infringement. Motorola is expected to appeal the judgment and is also still seeking a revocation of the patent at issue from the European Patent Office. However, the judge's grant of the injunction indicates that he believes there is a low probability that Motorola will be successful in having the patent revoked.

Motorola has been very active in German courts both seeking to protect and asserting its intellectual property. In July a German court granted an injunction for Microsoft Corp. against Motorola in a patent infringement case over EP0618540 which involved technology relating to common names for long and short file allocation tables. Also in July a German court dismissed a patent infringement suit by Microsoft Corp. over EP1304891 which monitors different functions on a smartphone and provides such information to other applications utilizing them. Another case that was brought by Microsoft against Motorola Mobility involving a patent on system input methods is postponed to September 20. In February Apple sued Motorola in the US District Court for the Southern District of California seeking an injunction to stop Motorola from bringing patent claims against Apple in Germany, alleging that the German suit violates a licensing agreement between Motorola and Qualcomm.

(Published by Jurist.org - September 14, 2012)