A ruling was issued today by a Dutch court banning the sale of Samsung Galaxy S, Galaxy S II, and Galaxy Ace phones in violation of an Apple patent involving swiping between photos in a gallery. This injunction will come into effect in mid – October (around the time of the iPhone 5 release).
However, it seems like the impact of this lawsuit might be mitigates somehow by Apple`s failure to file all the necessary paperwork for their patents in all the proper countries. The court has also dismissed all of Apple`s other patent claims, focusing their ruling on this area of infringement.
According to FOSS patents, Samsung may be able to find a way around that specific patent without a huge degradation of the usability of its devices since it seems to relate to the way users flip through the pictures in a photo gallery. Although Samsung might be able to work around this decision in Europe, it is considered a setback for Android, which is at issue in more than 50 lawsuits worldwide. It is likely that the winning patent is infringed by Android itself-not the OS itself, but by one or more of the applications that ship with Android and which will impair the photo viewing area. Apple has now obtained the first enforceable court decision, out of many other lawsuits worldwide, that finds Android infringing to an Apple patent. Still yet more to come in that space.
