This is a good week for Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL). On Wednesday, they officially unveiled the highly anticipated iPhone 5 and on Thursday morning, they won a patent lawsuit against Motorola. The lawsuit, which took place in Germany, was for a legal injunction that would ban the sale of certain Motorola phones and tablets that feature the copyright infringement.
The patent that’s the problem, has what’s called a “rubber-banding” effect. This feature makes a page on a mobile device pop right back up after the user swipes down to the bottom of the screen.
Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) accused Motorola of stealing their patent right after they described the technology for European and US patents. Last April, Motorola openly acknowledged the infringement but decided to claim Apple’s patent as invalid. Later in August, they started denying the infringement.
Now that Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) has won the lawsuit, they have a few choices as what to do next. They can pay for a $32 million bond to enforce a ban that may not last, as it can easily be appealed, or they can pay an extra $12.9 million to get Motorola to stop selling any devices that infringe on the patents. They could also pay $12.9 million to get Germany to recall all products.
Android maker Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) is expected to appeal the decision in Munich, and will continually question if Apple’s patent infringement claims are valid.
Florian Meuller from Foss Patents said, “The outcome of those cases shows that Android has far bigger patent infringement problems than any piece of computer software has ever had in the history of the industry, and this has many of Google’s hardware partners profoundly concerned.”
It wasn’t that long ago that Apple defeated Samsung over a massive patent infringement case. The world’s most valuable company won $1 billion in damages from Samsung.
It’s really no surprise that Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) is winning all these patent infringement lawsuits- they are definitely one of the more successful tech companies out there today.
