The Patent Office in the US has decided that one of Steve Jobs’ favorite inventions is not exactly worthy of a patent, and should this decision remain, then you can be sure that Samsung will only need to pay just 80% of their original $1.05 billion fine which was handed down to them in a judgment not too long ago. Steve Jobs did say when he rolled out the original iPhone all those years ago, “And boy have we patented it.” The patent in question is this, a rather clever screen trick that convinced the late Steve Jobs that Apple could very well roll out a decent smartphone.
FOSS Patents’ Florian Mueller has called it a “non-final” ruling, where the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office declared that the so-called ’381 patent was invalid. Apple called it “inertial scrolling,” where in the trial itself, it was called the “rubber band” effect. The USPTO has so far decided that claim 19 is invalid because it was anticipated by a couple of previously filed patents, where an European one was filed nearly 10 years ago by Luigi Lira and, in an ironic twist, a 2010 Apple patent.
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