Apple scored a significant patent victory against Motorola today, with Germany’s Munich I Regional Court awarding Apple an injunction against any Motorola products that violate their patent relating to photo management.
Florian Mueller of FOSS Patents reports:
Presiding Judge Dr. Peter Guntz announced that Apple has won an injunction against all Motorola Mobility devices that implement EP2059868 on a “portable electronic device for photo management”. […] If Apple enforces the ruling, it can even require Motorola to destroy any infringing products in its possession in Germany and recall, at MMI’s expense, any infringing products from German retailers in order to have them destroyed as well.
The patent specifically applies to page turning in a photo app when used in a zoomed in mode, which is currently used by all of Motorola’s Android-based phones. It’s up to Apple to enforce the ban, however, and it is unclear whether the company has plans to actually enforce the ruling, or to instead use it as a sort of moral victory. If Apple did enforce the ruling, they could force Motorola to destroy any infringing devices currently being sold at retail.
Update: We’ve received an official statement from a Motorola company representative on the matter:
Today’s ruling in Munich, Germany on the patent litigation brought by Apple concerns a software feature associated with performing certain functions when viewing photos in a ‘zoomed in’ mode on mobile devices. We note that the Court ruled that performing the functions in a ‘zoomed out’ mode does not infringe on this patent. We expect no impact to supply or future sales as we have already implemented a new way to view photos on our products that does not interfere with the user experience.
