Judge Richard Posner has issued an order upholding some of Apple's touchscreen heuristics patent claims against Motorola Mobility, reports "FOSS Patents" (http://macte.ch/T0xyL).

The '949 patent covers, with respect to a handful of rather basic gestures, the problem-solving strategy of interpreting the user's touchscreen commands by recognizing swipes that are not straight lines (a human being can hardly draw a perfectly straight line) by virtue of a certain level of tolerance," Florian Mueller writes for "FOSS Patents."

All this is part of an ongoing battle between the two companies. Apple has previously alleged that Motorola infringes 24 of its patents (21 of them with Android-based phones, the remaining three with set-top boxes and DVRs), while Motorola previously asserted 18 patents against a variety of Apple products (mostly but not exclusively iPhone, iPad and iPod). Litigation between the two companies has taken place in several different federal courts.

In November 2010 Apple sued Motorola, alleging that the company's smartphone lineup and the operating software it uses infringe on the iPhone-maker's intellectual property. The two lawsuits came after Motorola sued Apple in October 2010 for patent infringement. Motorola claims that Apple's iPhone, iPad, iPod touch and certain Mac computers infringe Motorola patents.