A Tokyo court ruled on Friday that a number of Samsung’s legacy smartphone models infringe on the “rubber-banding” or “bounce-back” patent held by Apple.
The Japan court found older versions of Samsung’s smartphone user interface, which have since been modified to avoid litigation, mimicked a unique scrolling behavior patented by Apple, reports Reuters.
Specifically, Samsung infringed on Apple’s “rubber-banding” feature that triggers a “bounce-back” animation when a user scrolls to the end of a digital document. The property is designed to give feedback when navigating a web page or other digital asset, adding to the carefully crafted user experience offered by iOS.
Although Samsung has changed the action in their current products by adding a blue line to indicate the end of a document, the patent is still a point of contention in the Apple v. Samsung post-trial proceedings in the United States.
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in April found the property invalid. Howeverm the USPTO did validate a few key claims in the patent, including “Claim 19,” which Apple used against a number of Samsung products in a high-profile trial last summer.
