Samsung loses rubber-banding patent case to Apple in Japan as well as US

Reuters reports (via Techmeme) that Apple has persuaded a Japanese court that Samsung did indeed infringe its patent of the rubber-banding or bounce-back user-interface feature.

Apple claimed that Samsung had copied the “bounce-back”, in which icons on its smartphones and tablets quiver back when users scroll to the end of an electronic document. Samsung has already changed its interface on recent models to show a blue line at the end of documents …

The ruling, due to be announced in detail later today, means that Samsung may have to withdraw from sale in Japan some of its early models that incorporate the feature.

The same claim had earlier been rejected in the U.S. back in April by the U.S. Patent and Trademark office, allowing Samsung’s older handsets to remain on sale within the country, before the decision was reversed earlier this month.