Tokyo beak rules against Samsung in Apple 'bounce back' case

Tokyo's district judge has ruled that Samsung smartphones and fondleslabs infringe on Apple's infamous "bounce back" feature.

The pair of patent-battling firms still have cases backed up around the world, including in Japan, where a judge last ruled against Apple in a suit over syncing music and video data in August last year.

Damages haven't been discussed yet in the bounce-back case and there's an argument that the ruling isn't going to make a whole lot of impact on Sammy, since it's already worked around the bounce-back with its "blue line" replacement UI feature in newer models. Instead of docs and images bouncing when the end of a list is reached, there's a blue line at the edge of the screen as an indicator.

There's also the issue that the US Patent and Trademark Office decided in April that Apple's patent for the bounce-back feature was actually invalid. Although that might not affect the Japanese ruling, it will certainly stop Sammy from being too bothered about it, since its old phones will stay on sale in one of its biggest markets no matter what.

Of course, the usual round of appeals are still open to the firms so these cases, along with the others in the world, are likely to keep trudging through the courts until long after we've all either lost interest or grown old and died. ®