Motorola and Samsung have scored a victory in the smartphone patent wars against Apple, with the Mannheim Regional Court announcing a decision against Apple’s claim that Android-based devices infringe its touch event patent.
According to FOSS Patents, unlike the multitouch patents that Apple asserted at its recent trial against Samsung in California, each one of which is specific to a particular gesture, this is a fairly broad patent that covers the way the operating system reports touch events to applications or purposely ignores them.
The announcement combines verdicts in two separate lawsuits, with Google-owned smartphone subsidiary Motorola the defendant against Apple in one and Samsung the defendant in the other.
The verdict comes as part of a series of lawsuits between Apple and numerous Android device makers known as the smartphone patent wars.
Andrew Sadauskas is a former journalist at SmartCompany and a former editor of TechCompany.
