Apple retains multitouch patent thanks to Patent Office ruling, forces competition to seek alternatives

Sorry, anonymous Apple multitouch patent challenger -- your victory isn't only temporary, it's also short-lived. The US Patent Office has decided to uphold patent No. 7,479,949 after tentatively invalidating it in December of 2012, which could mean bad news for many of Cupertino's competitors. If those numbers sound vaguely familiar, that's because they're known to most people as the controversial multitouch patent (that covers the downward-swipe gesture as seen in the video after the break) that Apple used against Palm, HTC and Samsung in court. In fact, it was one of the two patents that led to the import ban of some Samsung devices in the US. Needless to say, it now remains a powerful weapon for lawsuits in Apple's arsenal, and rivals best find a way to work around it on their designs.

engadget.com

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Tokyo court rules in Apple's favor in patent battle, Samsung has deja vu

In case you forgot, Samsung and Apple's legal squabbles didn't end in US federal court last year: the litigation rages on in international courts. Stop us if you've heard this one -- Samsung and Apple are caught up in a lawsuit focusing in part on Cupertino's bounce back patent, and things aren't looking great for Sammy's lawyers. It's a familiar story, but this time it's playing out in a Japanese courtroom, with a Tokyo judge deciding that a number of Samsung devices are in violation of Apple's scrolling technology. What's this mean to the consumer? Nothing yet -- the court still hasn't calculated damages or approved an injunction, and this isn't the only legal battle the firms are waging in the country's court system. Feel free to brush up on your kanji and check out the source link below for more details, or skip on over to Bloomberg for a more digestible account.

Filed under: Cellphones, Apple, Samsung