A German court has declared an early Apple photo-management patent invalid because of evidence in a video in which Steve Jobs presented the original iPhone back in January 2007.

Apple had won injunctions against both Samsung and Motorola using its patent in different European jurisdictions, according to patent blogger Florian Mueller, who observed the proceedings today in the Munich-based Federal Patent Court of Germany. The problem was that Apple disclosed the "bounce-back effect" when Jobs demonstrated the photo gallery back in 2007—but the priority date of the German patent was June 2007, five months after the demonstration.

Effectively, Jobs killed his own company's patent by showing off the feature before asking the German patent office for protection. The video was submitted as evidence by lawyers representing Google's Motorola Mobility.

If the same sequence of events had happened in the US, it wouldn't have been a problem. Under law prevailing in 2007, inventors had a 12-month grace period to file for a patent after making their invention.

The video was shown in open court, "but only on a laptop close to the bench," Mueller wrote.

This is the same 2007 demo in which Jobs bragged of the iPhone's multitouch features: "And boy, have we patented it!" While that may be true in the US, it was apparently less true abroad.