Samsung Electronics has requested a new trial for a patent related to a $1 billion infringement ruling against it in a case brought by rival Apple, due to a re-examination of the patent at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
Samsung, in a petition filed late Monday, asked the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California to retry the damages portion of the patent infringement case for one of seven Apple patents Samsung was found to infringe last August.
The Samsung request for a retrial covers U.S. patent 7,469,381, a patent for list scrolling and document translation, scaling and rotation on a touchscreen display, known as Apple’s overscroll bounce patent.
Earlier this year, the USPTO re-examined the Apple patent, and Samsung has learned that Apple has “successfully advocated a new claim construction … and significantly narrowed its scope in connection with re-examination proceedings before the PTO to avoid having this claim rejected,” Samsung’s lawyers wrote in court documents.
While the USPTO confirmed Apple’s patent claim, Apple “advocated an entirely new and far narrower interpretation” of the claim used against Samsung, Samsung’s lawyers wrote. With the new interpretation, several Samsung products “cannot possibly infringe” Apple’s claim on the patent, they wrote.
Samsung also asked the court for a stay in the case pending its appeal.
Last week, Samsung asked the court to remove its deadlines in the case because Apple’s new damages expert had come up with larger damage estimates than previously asserted, reported Florian Mueller on Fosspatents.com. Apple accused Samsung of attempting to “delay and derail” the case.
Representatives of Apple and Samsung didn’t immediately respond to requests for comments on the petition for retrial.