Rubber Band Patent [VIDEO], Samsung last night informed US District Court Judge Lucy Koh that
Apple’s “rubber band” patent has been tentatively invalidated by the US
Patent and Trademark Office.
The rubber band gun, it would seem, has backfired.
The
USPTO did not declare the patent obvious, but rather cited “prior art”
in the form of two previous patents that anticipate this one.
Strangely
enough, one of the patents is in the name of the same Apple user
interface designer, Bas Ording, as the “rubber band” patent.
The
patent office also cited a European patent filed in 2003 by AOL, which
relates to detecting the layout of a webpage, comparing the layout to
the window it's being displayed in, and reformatting the page to align
with the window.
The patent office decision is not final, but it is interesting. Go here for videos.
