New ruling says Samsung infringed on Apple autocomplete patent

With a new patent trial scheduled to start on March 31, 2014 between Apple and Samsung, Judge Lucy Koh has entered a summary judgment order on some motions from the two parties. Judge Koh denied some requests from Apple, but did rule that Samsung infringed an Apple patent on “word recommendations” aka autocomplete. At this point, Samsung will now have to argue at trial that the patent itself should be ruled invalid. Considering the ubiquity of autocomplete on any smartphone, this ruling could be a problem for manufacturers of other Android devices. Reportedly, Google is involved with an anonymous reexamination request of the patent. As the parties prepare for trial, Apple still has five patents at issue with one of them ruled as being infringed upon by Samsung even before the jury starts to hear the case.

Meanwhile, Samsung also had five patents that it was claiming Apple infringed upon. One of these patents involved multimedia synchronization methods across devices. Judge Koh ruled in this latest order that the patent was invalid as argued by Apple, who pointed to an earlier filed patent for a similar method. Samsung appears to have acquired this particular patent for the sole purpose of being able to assert infringement against Apple, a strategy that has now failed with Judge Koh's ruling. Going into trial, Samsung is down to only four patents to be considered by the jury.

Between now and the start of the trial, the CEOs of the companies are slated to meet for settlement talks. This latest ruling is expected to give Apple significant leverage in those talks

source: FOSS Patents