Motorola and Samsung won a small victory in Mannheim Regional Court this week when a panel ruled that the two companies do not infringe on Apple’s “touch event model patent,” says Florian Mueller of FOSS Patents. Judge Andreas Voss oversaw the two separate lawsuits that happened to make their way through the German court at the same time.

According to FOSS Patents, Apple patent EP2098948 is a fairly broad patent that describes how an operating system recognizes touch events in multitouch enabled devices. Because of its general nature, enforcement of the patent would have required a significant amount of effort to develop a workaround and would likely degrade the resulting user experience of any competitor’s products.

Apple lost a similar case in the Netherlands where it was denied an injunction request based on this patent. The Cupertino company also asserted this patent against HTC in the UK and the court ruled the patent was invalid. The German court didn’t take the ruling that far, but it did let Motorola and Samsung off the hook this time.

[Via Engadget]

German court: Motorola, Samsung don’t violate Apple touch event patent originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 21 Sep 2012 18:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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