Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Android devices have already been found to infringe 17 valid Apple and Microsoft patents

Roughly three months ago I listed 11 Apple and Microsoft patents that courts in different countries had deemed valid and infringed by Android-based devices. This list has grown by more than 50% during this calendar quarter, so I wanted to update it.

With respect to each patent-in-suit, my list reflects the most recent state of affairs. For example, a couple of Apple patents over which one Australian judge granted an injunction that was lifted as a result of a review by the full court do not appear on my list.

So here's my updated list of the related findings by courts and the ITC (a trade agency with quasijudicial authority) according to which Android devices infringe no less than different Apple and Microsoft patents that the same courts deemed valid, in chronological order (of the first decision on each patent):

  1. EP2059868 on a "portable electronic device for photo management"

    I call this one the "photo gallery page-flipping" patent.

    The Rechtbank 's-Gravenhage (a court in the Dutch city of The Hague) deemed this patent valid and infringed in an August 24, 2011 decision granting Apple a preliminary injunction against certain Samsung smartphones. On March 1, 2012, the Munich I Regional Court granted Apple a permanent injunction over this patent against Motorola Mobility, which became a wholly-owned Google subsidiary in May 2012.

  2. U.S. Patent No. 7,469,381 on "list scrolling and document translation, scaling, and rotation on a touch-screen display"

    This is the "overscroll bounce" or "rubber-banding" patent. I once called it "Apple's favorite make-Android-awkward patent". Apple has convinced courts on three continents (North America, Europe and Asia) that Android-based devices infringe this patent.

    The United States District Court for the Northern District of California deemed this patent valid and infringed in a December 2, 2011 decision denying an Apple motion for a preliminary injunction against four Samsung devices. The denial was based on an insufficient showing of the nexus between the identified infringement and the alleged harm to Apple's business.

    On August 24, a jury rendered a verdict according to which this patent is valid and infringed by all 21 Samsung devices accused of infringement of this patent. Apple can still win an injunction on this basis (it formally requested one on Friday). Even if no injunction was granted, Apple could, at a minimum, seek monetary compensation.

    Approximately 20 hours before the California verdict, Samsung was found to infringe this patent by a court in its own country, the Seoul Central District Court.

    On September 13, the Munich I Regional Court ordered a German patent injunction against Google's Motorola Mobility over this patent.

  3. U.S. Design Patent No. D618,677 on an "electronic device"

    This is an iPhone-related design patent.

    In the aforementioned December 2, 2011 decision, the United States District Court for the Northern District of California deemed this design patent valid (with a narrowed scope) and infringed, calling it a "close question" and denying an injunction for balance-of-hardship reasons.

    On August 24, 2012, a jury deemed this design patent valid and infringed by 11 Samsung smartphones (mostly Galaxy devices). Apple is pursuing a permanent injunction on that basis.

  4. U.S. Patent No. 5,946,647 on a "system and method for performing an action on a structure in computer-generated data"

    I dubbed this one the "data tapping" patent, a term that has since been adopted by a number of journalists.

    The United States International Trade Commission (ITC) deemed this patent valid and infringed in a December 19, 2011 order of a U.S. import ban against HTC.

    I published the winning claim chart.

    In a June 29, 2012 order of a preliminary injunction against the Galaxy Nexus smartphone, the United States District Court for the Northern District of California deemed this patent valid and infringed, but denied an injunction on the basis of this patent for balance-of-hardships reasons.

    Motorola Mobility failed with summary judgment motions in a litigation in the Northern District of Illinois to prove this patent invalid or not infringed. The recent dismissal of that lawsuit was based on other reasons than the merit of Apple's infringement claims.

  5. EP1964022 on "unlocking a device by performing gestures on an unlock image"

    This is the first slide-to-unlock patent.

    On February 16, 2012, the Munich I Regional Court granted Apple an injunction over this patent against Motorola Mobility.

  6. U.S. Patent No. 6,370,566 on "generating meeting requests and group scheduling from a mobile device"

    On May 18, 2012, the ITC ordered a U.S. import ban against Motorola's Android-based devices that infringe this Microsoft patent.

  7. EP1304891 on "communicating multi-part messages between cellular devices using a standardized interface"

    On May 24, 2012, the Munich I Regional Court granted Microsoft an injunction over this patent against Motorola's Android-based devices. This was the first Microsoft v. Google decision ever. It came down only days after Google completed its acquisition of Motorola Mobility. The ruling is already being enforced in Germany.

  8. U.S. Design Patent No. D504,889 on an "electronic device"

    This is an iPad-related design patent.

    On June 27, 2012, the United States District Court for the Northern District of California granted Apple a preliminary injunction against the Galaxy Tab 10.1 following a partly-successful appeal to the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. A jury deemed it valid but not infringed by Samsung. On this new basis, Samsung is pursuing the dissolution of the preliminary injunction, while Apple has asked the court to overrule the jury on this item. I decided to leave it on this list because judges overrule juries and not the other way round, and ni light of the Federal Circuit's take on this patent. The jury's finding contradicts Judge Koh's earlier decision and the position the appeals court took in its opinion on Samsung's preliminary injunction appeal, and Judge Koh did not dissolve the injunction immediately since the chances of Apple's Rule 50 ("overrule-the-jury") motion have yet to be evaluated. Even if the preliminary injunction was dissolved at some point, a new and permanent one could issue after a December 6 hearing.

    In the summer of 2011, the Düsseldorf Regional Court had granted Apple a preliminary injunction against the same product over the European equivalent, a so-called Community design, of this U.S. design patent. The appeals court, the Düsseldorf Higher Regional Court, later upheld the injunction but did so on the basis of German unfair competition law, not on the grounds of the asserted Community design. Later, in July, it granted Apple a cross-border injunction against the Galaxy Tab 7.7 based on that Community design. Yesterday, the regional court looked at the matter again. It stayed the main proceeding and expressed doubts about Apple's infringement allegations. Apple previously lost cases over this patent in the Netherlands and the UK.

  9. U.S. Patent No. 8,086,604 on a "universal interface for retrieval of information in a computer system"

    This is a patent on Siri-style unified search.

    On June 29, 2012, the United States District Court for the Northern District of California granted Apple a preliminary injunction against the Samsung/Google Galaxy Nexus smartphone over this patent.

    Oddly, earlier that week Google placed a lot of emphasis on voice search at its Google I/O developer conference, where it announced that more than 1 million Android-based devices are now activated on a daily basis.

    Samsung appealed the injunction to the Federal Circuit, which held a related hearing on August 20 and, by the time I'm writing this post, has not yet made a decision.

  10. U.S. Patent No. 8,046,721 on "unlocking a device by performing gestures on an unlock image"

    This is the second slide-to-unlock patent.

    In its aforementioned Galaxy Nexus decision, the United States District Court for the Northern District of California deemed Samsung and Google to infringe on this patent, which it considered valid. The injunction was not based on this patent only for balance-of-hardship reasons. Apple may still win a permanent injunction or, at least, seek damages if the preliminary findings of infringement and validity are upheld.

  11. U.S. Patent No. 8,074,172 on a "method, system, and graphical user interface for providing word recommendations"

    This is an autocorrect patent.

    In its aforementioned Galaxy Nexus decision, the United States District Court for the Northern District of California deemed Samsung and Google to infringe on this patent, which it considered valid. The injunction was not based on this patent only for balance-of-hardship reasons. Apple may still win a permanent injunction or, at least, seek damages if the preliminary findings of infringement and validity are upheld.

  12. EP0618540 on a "common name space for long and short filenames"

    On July 27, the Mannheim Regional Court granted Microsoft a German patent injunction against Google's Motorola Mobility over this file system patent. It decided the infringement question in Microsoft's favor and did not find Google's invalidity arguments strong enough to order a stay.

  13. U.S. Design Patent No. D539,087 on an "electronic device"

    While Judge Koh said in her preliminary injunction decision in December 2011 that Samsung had raised substantial questions concerning the validity of this patent, a jury later (on August 24) found it valid (and also infringed). Unlike Judge Koh's strong conviction of infringement of the tablet design patent, she did not rule out that Apple could prevail on this patent at trial, and Apple did prevail. More importantly, the appeals court rejected Judge Koh's ruling that this patent is likely invalid, and upheld the denial of a preliminary injunction over this patent solely for equitable reasons. With the jury verdict in its favor, Apple is now pursuing a permanent injunction based on this patent.

  14. U.S. Patent No. 7,844,915 on "application programming interfaces for scrolling operations"

    This Apple patent is inevitably infringed by any reasonable implementation of the pinch-to-zoom gesture. On August 24, the California jury found 21 Samsung Android devices to infringe this patent, which it also deemed valid.

  15. U.S. Patent No. 7,864,163 on a "portable electronic device, method, and graphical user interface for displaying structured electronic documents"

    On August 24, the California jury found this Apple "tap-to-zoom" patent valid and infringed by 16 Samsung Android devices.

  16. U.S. Design Patent No. D604,305 on a "graphical user interface for a display screen or portion thereof"

    This Apple design patent is software-related. It's about the arrangement of icons. On August 24, the California jury found 13 Samsung devices to infringe this patent, and deemed it valid.

  17. EP1040406 on a "soft input panel system and method"

    On September 20, the Munich I Regional Court granted Microsoft a German patent injunction against Google's Motorola Mobility over this operating system patent. This was already the third time a German court found a Microsoft patent infringed by Motorola Mobility's Android-based devices, and the fourth time worldwide. Microsoft is embroiled in litigation with only one Android device maker, while Apple is also suing Samsung and HTC. Relative to the number of adjudged patents, Microsoft has a higher hit rate than Apple.

The list above is limited to Apple and Microsoft patents (13 from Apple, 4 from Microsoft). I don't follow litigation by non-practicing entities anymore, and I'm not aware of any particular decision in favor of an NPE against Android, but many cases are pending and haven't come to judgment yet. As far as other major players than Apple and Microsoft are concerned, Oracle is certain to appeal its case against Google to the Federal Circuit, British Telecom is still suing Google, Nokia has recently asserted dozens of patents in the U.S. and Germany against HTC and Viewsonic, and BlackBerry maker Research in Motion (RIM) is in such dire straits that it's probably only a matter of time (the company appears to be in a serious disarray right now) until it also asserts some of its wireless email patents against Google and/or Google's hardware partners. A smaller but nevertheless interesting plaintiff is Skyhook Wireless, which just brought a second patent infringement action against Google, alleging infringement of eight more patents by Android and Google Maps.

Only a minority of all patent assertions brought against Android-based devices have been adjudicated so far. The number of patents held to be infringed will keep growing, and I'll probably have to update this list a couple of times before the end of the year.

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