Apple wins lawsuit from Motorola – phones / tablets to be destroyed?

More Apple news today, as the company has won a patent lawsuit which might result in a sales ban for Motorola Mobility phones and tablets in Munich, Germany. Apple has also demanded from the judge that Motorola Mobility (recently acquired by Google) has to recall and destroy all infringing phones and tablets that are at distributors and in stores, the tech giant from Cupertino wants the devices to be destroyed so they can’t be sold again.

The patent that caused the dispute is the so called  ’rubber-band patent’ from Apple. This patent covers how the screen bounces to indicate that you’ve scrolled to the end of a list.

Before, Apple already won a lawsuit in the United States against Samsung, where the latter has to pay a fine of $1 billion. Part of that lawsuit covered the same patent.  The ban is preliminary and Apple has to pay € 25 million to cover a permanent injunction for entire Germany,  €10 million more to have the infringing devices to be recalled and another € 10 million to enforce the destruction of the devices. But all only happens if Motorola doesn’t appeal or doesn’t win the appeal.

It’s likely that Motorola will make changes to the Android OS which replaces the functionality covered by the patent.  There is an alternative solution which has already been developed by Android developers, Motorola has just to make sure that their phones and tablets get this update.