USPTO invalidates ‘Steve Jobs patent’
The US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has invalidated Apple’s ‘Steve Jobs’ smartphone patent, but the decision is not final and the company can file a response.
In a first office action on December 3, USPTO examiner David England struck down 20 claims covering the multi-touch patent, described as a “touch screen device, method, and graphical user interface for determining commands by applying heuristics”.
Known as the ‘Steve Jobs patent’ owing to the late co-founder’s work in creating it (he is a named inventor), the innovation is now “subject to re-examination”, according to a USPTO document.
To have it re-examined Apple can file a response, which typically addresses the perceived errors in the office action and includes an amendment to the claims. The deadline for responding is February 3, 2013, but this can be extended up to six months in one-month blocks.
In a preliminary ruling in October, the US-based International Trade Commission (ITC) held that the patent was valid and infringed by Samsung.
Samsung has since alerted the ITC, which is expected to make a final ruling on that dispute in January 2013, to the USPTO’s ruling.
But in a letter to the ITC, Apple lawyer Brian Busey stressed that the USPTO’s ruling is only preliminary and it uses a lower legal standard than the ITC when assessing invalidity. In a blog post, patent consultant Florian Müller, who first reported the letter, said:
“USPTO re-examinations use a preponderance standard (meaning ‘more likely than not’) while the ITC, like US federal courts, considers patents invalid only if there's clear and convincing evidence (meaning much more than just a 50% chance) of invalidity.”
Meanwhile, Apple and Samsung are back in a Californian court to resolve post-legal motions from their trial in August, in which a judge fined Samsung $1.05 billion for patent infringement.
