Apple May Legally Force Motorola To Destroy Their Phones

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CellPhones

 

Germany has become quite the hotbed for patent lawsuits lately as it’s been in the spotlight for the Apple vs Motorola Mobility legal battle. As the legal war rages on, a new ruling has found that Motorola did indeed violate Apple’s EU Patent No. EP2059868 on a “portable electronic device for photo management”. The patent in question basically fixes over scrolling by bouncing the user back a bit once they’ve zoomed in too far, and even though this patent is software specific, it may have repercussions on Motorola’s hardware if they don’t come up with a fix quickly.

The injunction granted by the Munich I Regional Court gives Apple the ability to require Motorola to destroy any infringing products in the company’s possession in Germany. Apple can even force Motorola to recall all their patent infringing products from German retailers just so they can destroy them. Although the odds of this happening are very unlikely, it would be pretty awesome to watch a mountainous pile of Droid Bionics being burned in a city square. It’ll be like a 16th century witch hunt of evil Android phones that tried to steal their magical powers from Apple.

All is not lost for Motorola though. A simple software update can be sent to their infringing products to avoid any enforcement of the injunction, and that’s most likely what will happen. Apple still has a number of cases against Motorola and other handset manufacturers in courts across Europe, so it should be interesting to see how those companies adjust their legal strategies based on this latest ruling.

[via FOSS Patents]

 

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