Foss Patents is reporting that the US Patent and Trademark Office has tentatively invalidated Apple’s bounce scroll patent — sometimes referred to as “rubber banding” — possibly affecting the recent ruling in the Apple v Samsung trial.
The patent in question concerns the bounce scroll feature in iOS: scroll too far, and whatever you’re looking at bounces back into position. A Monday court filing from Samsung reveals that the USPTO has invalidated all of Apple’s claims to it, US Patent No. 7,469,381. The patent has been rejected on prior art considerations — one concerning a “controlling content display” by AOL/Luigi Lira published on October 2, 2003, and another being “continuous scrolling list with acceleration”.
The USPTO claims “no inventive step” was found between the prior art and Apple’s patent — so it’s now up to the company to prove to the patent office or the appeals court that the IP was new. As for Samsung, it already found a workaround to avoid infringing the overscroll bounce patent. [Foss Patents via Apple Insider]