German Court Delays Apple, Motorola Multi-touch Patent Ruling

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The Mannheim Regional Court in Germany postponed its decision in a trial where Apple is accusing Motorola Mobility of infringing on a patent covering multi-touch patent. The decision had been scheduled for Friday, but will now happen on September 21 — the same day the court will issue its decision on whether or not Samsung is infringing on the same patent.

The ruling in both cases will likely be the same, according to Florian Mueller of Foss Patents, although the court didn’t indicate that’s the reason for the rescheduling.

German court makes Apple wait 3 more weeks for patent rulingGerman court makes Apple wait 3 more weeks for patent ruling

“Based on how those two trials went, there is no obvious reason why the two cases might have different outcomes. And the consistent outcome is more likely than not to be a finding of non-infringement,” he said.

A German court delayed a ruling in another patent infringement trial involving Apple and Motorola Mobility earlier this month. In that case, Apple accused Motorola of infringing on its over-scroll bounce, or rubber band effect, patent.

This isn’t the only case involving decisions surrounding Apple outside of the United Sates today. A Japanese court ruled that Samsung didn’t infringe on an Apple patent covering the process of syncing music and videos between mobile devices and computers. That ruling will likely be little more than a minor point in Apple’s overall patent infringement fight with Samsung.

Apple’s new delay in Germany amounts to only three weeks, but assuming the court rules Motorola Mobility and Samsung didn’t infringe on its multi-touch patent the iPhone and iPad maker may be just fine waiting to hear the decision.

Jeff Gamet

Jeff Gamet

Jeff is the Mac Observer's Managing Editor, and co-host of the Apple Context Machine podcast. He is the author of "The Designer's Guide to Mac OS X" from Peachpit Press, and writes for several design-related publications. Jeff has presented at events such as Macworld Expo, the RSA Conference, and the Mac Computer Expo. In all his spare time, he also co-hosts the We Have Communicators podcast, and makes guest appearances on several other podcasts, too. Jeff dreams in HD.

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