Remember back during the Apple vs Samsung case where the “rubber band” patent was brought up? The one jurors decided Samsung violated and awarded Apple close to $200 million in damages over? Yeah, that one. It seems that the Patent Office might not agree with the Cupertino company’s claim on said patent. They did after all just declare it temporarily invalid.

Officially known as Patent #7,469,381, the rubber band patent was touted as Steve Jobs’ favorite, a favorite that was preceded by two earlier patents. One was filed in 2003 in Europe by Luigi Lira and another one filed in 2005 by Apple itself for Bas Ording and Scott Forstall. Funny thing, Ording was the designer that showed Jobs the infamous bounce back initially.

What this means for Samsung is that they could shave a fifth of that back-breaking judgement off, if the invalidity of the claim becomes binding. For their part, Sammy has already filed a motion with Judge Koh to dismiss all 20 instances of claim 19 violation. Expect the ordeal to drag out for a while longer and as always, we’ll be here to keep you updated.

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