Germany's Mannheim Regional Court held a Dec. 7 trial on Apple's rubber-banding (overscroll bounce) infringement action against Samsung, reports "FOSS Patents" (http://macte.ch/apaho). The patent-in-suit is EP2126678 on "list scrolling and document translation, scaling, and rotation on a touch-screen display.

The Mannheim court has already stayed a couple of other Apple lawsuits over doubts concerning the validity of certain asserted intellectual property rights. And a stay could also happen in the rubber-banding case, "though the hurdle is high (German courts only stay patent infringement cases if there's at least an 80% probability of invalidation) and it looks like a close question whether Samsung's invalidity contentions meet that threshold," Florian Mueller writes for "FOSS Patents."

This is all part of the ongoing, global legal battle. Apple and Samsung have filed more than 30 lawsuits against each other across four continents. For example, Apple alleges that Samsung copied the slide-to-unlock technology of its iPhone and iPad devices.