When Florian Mueller submitted his latest game to the App Store, he didn’t think it would end with him filing a complaint against Apple with the European Union, the U.S. Department of Justice and other antitrust authorities around the world.

But that’s exactly what happened after Apple rejected his Corona Control Game due to its COVID-19 theme. Google, which barred Mueller’s game from the Google Play store, is also named in his complaints.

Germany-based Mueller, who has another career as a blogger on legal issues, is not happy with how Apple and Google handled his game submission.

“When [Apple and Google] rejected the game at the beta-testing stage, I was indeed surprised that they took issue with it in such a fundamental way they wouldn’t even let us distribute it to testers,” Mueller, 51, told Cult of Mac.

It’s likely this would be an entirely different story if Steve Jobs was still at Apple’s helm, but the Cupertino company has now agreed to drop a number of its infringement claims against Samsung, roughly cutting the case in half, in a bid to ensure that a trial goes ahead this summer.

Likewise, Samsung has agreed to do the same — dropping five of its 12 complaints  — but both companies continue to bicker over the “copycat products” that have made Samsung the world’s number one smartphone vendor. 

A German court Friday threw out Samsung’s patent-infringement lawsuit against Apple. The South Korean smartphone maker had claimed the iPhone maker violated a patent related to 3G wireless communications. Samsung had filed seven patent violation claims against Apple in Germany.

Samsung dropped its lawsuit against Apple in Germany after discovering a Qualcomm licensing agreement could shield the iPhone 4S from 3G patent-infringement charges. The South Korean smartphone maker later denied it was letting Apple completely off the hook.

In the ever-changing patent wars, somedays you are the windshield and some days you are the bug. After coming up roses Thursday, Apple finds itself on the losing side against Samsung and Motorola.

Microsoft’s recently-announced partnership with Nokia will significantly increase the chances of both Apple and Nokia settling their bitter patent infringement lawsuits against each other, says a long-time intellectual property activist who keeps a close eye on the patent strategies of the tech world’s largest firms.