Apple loses German patent court case

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-19699632

by akulbansal • 14 years ago

68 51 14 years ago

bbc.co.uk

scrrr• 14 years ago

> In a separate case being heard in Munich, the court backed Apple's claim that Motorola had infringed its patent on what happened when users scrolled to the end of a page, document or list - a technology known as "overscroll bounce" or "rubber banding".

That is also what the Chrome browser does..

shrikant• 14 years ago

"...in a smartphone" is the new "...on a computer".

tobias32• 14 years ago

I wonder how they plan to win that one, given that there are no software patents in Germany. (Only if software is used in connection with a "technical" invention)

tveita• 14 years ago

To be clear, Apple already did win that case: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/sep/14/motorola-mo...

Nothing about that makes sense to me, but that's patents for you.

motti• 14 years ago

HTC has a variation on this in HTC Sense 4 where lists stretches rather than bounces - i.e. the gaps between the list elements get progressively wider to mimic pulling an elastic band that is fixed on one end. I'm guessing they do that too avoid directly copying Apple's UX. It achieves the same goal of proving a real world effect to subtly indicate to the user they can scroll no further.

neya2• 14 years ago

This is seriously good news. I want open source to eventually win the war.

kgarten7• 14 years ago

Unfortunately, Android is not really open source :(

Edit: If you think this statement is not true, please look at Debian or any other REAL open source project compare it to Android. Android uses Open-Source as a marketing term, not in it's original meaning ... (or at least in how I understand open source)

neya2• 14 years ago

Really? The last time I checked I was able to download the source code and do something with it on my own. Could you please justify your statement?

deelowe3• 14 years ago

I stand that it is: http://source.android.com/

Some people like to state that gmail, maps, the play store and other proprietary Google bits are not open source and that is true, but those are not android. Those are separate apps.

Some like to claim that since Google gives vendors early access to the source, this somehow makes it not open. For those releases, at that specific date in time, maybe so. But, the source is released and generally pretty soon after phones start shipping (honeycomb was a different story and Google's statements on the matter have been proven to be true with the new combined tablet and phone releases).

Look, if android wasn't open source, projets like this would be a lot less successful: http://www.cyanogenmod.com/

mtgx• 14 years ago

I think you mean "not very open", as in not community built, or some other type of extreme openness like that (open <-> close is a scale, it's not black or white). But I'd argue that while Android should remain open source (you can use the source once it's ready), it should be even more "closed", in the sense that Google needs to have a lot more control over what the manufacturers/their partners can do with Android.

Why? Because it's the only way to ensure a cohesive "ecosystem" that helps not only Google and their Android users, but also the manufacturers themselves in the long run. After all, if everyone had their own little fork of Android, and there wouldn't be an "ecosystem" anymore, that wouldn't benefit them at all, as these days it's all about "platform wars", and splitting one big platform into 10 different ones would actually hurt the manufacturers, not help them.

This is why I think Google needs to "close" Android even more i.e. standardize it a lot more, and even demand from manufacturers to release their drivers. It would be awesome if they told them to release open source drivers, but even closed source ones would be useful, because if everyone did this, Android could actually (eventually) work like Windows.

You would be able to install "Android" on any 2-3 year old smartphone or tablet. But that's only if the manufacturers would be forced to release those drivers and maintain the support for that amount of time. And that's only possible if the Android ecosystem becomes a little tigher/more closed, or "less open" (as in manufacturers can't do whatever they want, and they must obey a set of rules for the well being of the ecosystem).

w1ntermute3• 14 years ago

> Android uses Open-Source as a marketing term

Oh really? https://twitter.com/Arubin/status/27808662429

leeoniya• 14 years ago

i wonder how much of the Apple tax can be attributed to bringing about patent litigation.

Apple loses German patent court case

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