By Friedrich Geiger
MANNHEIM, Germany--A German court Friday spared Samsung
Electronics Co (005930.SE) and Google Inc. (GOOG) unit Motorola
Mobility the prospect of a sales ban on many of their smartphones,
ruling the two companies haven't infringed a patent owned by Apple
Inc. (AAPL).
The regional court in Mannheim decided the software used by
Samsung and Motorola in their mobile devices is different from
Apple's patented functions related to multiple touches on
touchscreens.
The ruling also provides some relief for Google, whose operating
system Samsung and Motorola use for their smartphones and tablets,
four weeks after a U.S. court delivered a victory to Apple in a
high-stakes lawsuit over patent infringements by Samsung. Several
technology companies are fighting a patent battle in courts around
the globe.
The lawsuit concerns a touchscreen function crucial to many
smartphone applications, which allows touchscreens to sense
multiple touches at the same time, for example, when two fingers
are pressed simultaneously to different points on the screen. The
patent, EP2098948, is about the ability of a device to recognize
multiple touches in some areas of a screen and ignore them in
others.
"We welcome today's ruling, which affirms our position that our
products do not infringe Apple's intellectual property," Samsung
said in an emailed statement.
Write to Friedrich Geiger at friedrich.geiger@dowjones.com
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