Another day, another win for Apple versus an Android manufacturer. A Munich, Germany court recently ruled Apple can file for an injunction against Motorola phones and tablets, due to claims of a “rubber-banding” patent infringement. This “rubber-banding” patent is essentially an effect that can cause a page on a device to bounce back up after a user has swiped to the bottom of the screen, similar to the bounce back patent that was argued recently against Samsung. The unusual part of this story is Motorola actually acknowledged the alleged patent infringement back in April, but then backtracked and denied any sort of infringement later in August. As a result of this, Apple has a few options on the table for itself. The company can: 1) pay $32 million to enforce a ban which wouldn’t be permanent and would be open to an appeal, 2) pay an additional $12.9 million to force Motorola to get rid of any products named in the patent infringement or 3) pay an additional $12.9 million on top of the other fees in order to pursue a German recall of all Motorola products that infringe on Apple’s patents.

Naturally Motorola (and Google) can only shrug shoulders. A spokeswoman for Motorola is quoted as saying Motorola believes ” this will have a minimal impact on our business, if any“. This is because after all– Motorola doesn’t do major business in German markets, so in essence the potential of a sales’ ban would have minimal impact on its overall brand. Still, if you’re an Android manufacturer, there may be cause for serious concern. After all that’s happened recently, Apple is definitely not looking to let its foot off the gas anytime soon against anything and everything Android.

source: CNet