Motorola Loses ITC Case Against Apple for Proximity Sensor Patents

New submitter Rideak writes with this excerpt from CNet about an ITC ruling against Motorola in their case against Apple for violating a few of their proximity sensor patents: "The U.S. International Trade Commission today ended Motorola's case against Apple, which accused the iPhone and Mac maker of patent infringement. In a ruling (PDF), the ITC said that Apple was not violating Motorola's U.S. patent covering proximity sensors, which the commission called 'obvious.' It was the last of six patents Motorola aimed at Apple as part of an October 2010 complaint."

Comments

Re:Tech can be obvious

[whoever57]

He never said that rounded corners were distinctive. He said that they were a part of a distinctive design, which gets at a fundamental principle of design patents that you seem to not understand. Design patents work by specifying a number of claims for a particular design, which are taken as a whole when determining if infringement occurred. There is no design patent just for rounded corners. Don't believe me? Prove me wrong. What you'll find is that rounded corners are always just one claim among many in the design patents in which they're mentioned, and so they are never considered in a vacuum when determining whether a product infringes on the design patent.

Challenge accepted: . Design Patent 504,889 -- which lists Steve Jobs and Apple design guru Jonathan Ive, among others, as the "inventors" -- is a claim for a rectangular electronic device with rounded corners. Thatâ(TM)s right, Apple is claiming control over rectangles. The full claim is only 2 lines long, and amazingly broad -- Apple is claiming all devices with the basic shape shown here.

NOT A TROLL, YOU IDIOT MODERATORS.

[girlintraining]

This is not a troll. These are factual statements. You do not get to moderate -1 "disagree". Suck it up, cupcakes, and deal with the fact that Apple is a business, not a religion.