A Review of the Legal Claims in Apple v. Samsung: Utility Patent Infringement

Friday was the last day of evidence in the Apple v. Samsung case. Closing arguments will likely be on Tuesday week and then the jury will get the case. I posted earlier on the trade dress and design patent claims Apple has made against Samsung in Apple’s complaint. In this post I’ll focus on Apple’s utility patents.

Unlike design patents and trade dress, utility patents protect useful articles and methods. Here is a list of the patents originally asserted by Apple in its Complaint:

With over a year of pretrial motions, hearings, and orders, the list of asserted patents has been whittled down to three: the ‘163, ‘381, and ‘915 patents. These patents relate to various features of the iOS UI including pinch to zoom, rebounding list scrolling, and rebounding scrolling on the home screen, respectively. These patents are not so broad as to block any competing smartphone. If fact, earlier versions of the Android operating system did not include rebounding scrolling and

In preparation for closing arguments, Apple prepared and filed a chart outlining which Samsung devices were accused of infringing Apples various patents.

Samsung is arguing that the patents are not valid because the features claimed were already known when Apple filed its patent applications.