Apple Inc. is on a concerted mission to protect its patented intellectual property, brand loyalty and smartphone market share at all costs, with its sights set clearly on Google’s Android platform. The Cupertino, California-based computer and consumer electronics giant began its attack with a flanking strategy, by filing patent infringement lawsuits against makers of Android-based devices, rather than going after Google directly. Apple reached into its colossal stack of early Maintosh patents and its war chest of two hundred iPhone patents and got to work suing Nokia, HTC and Samsung. One of the patents at the heart of all three lawsuits is Apple’s U.S. Patent No. 7,469,381 awarded in 2008, covering “list scrolling and document translation, scaling, and rotation on a touch-screen display.” And it has Apple’s rivals becoming running scared.

Android Killer Patent 381

Patent 381 protects the iPhone’s signature multitouch scroll-back and bounce design when scrolling a document. The highly intuitive, widely copied spring-back behavior occurs when a user reaches the edge of a document. Nokia tried to invalidate Patent 381 and failed, eventually settling with Apple out of court. During the Nokia litigation, the U.S. Patent Office reexamined and validated all categories of patent 381, arming it with even more firepower.

According to Foss Patents, Apple’s goal is to strip the scrolling bounce design from Android devices to make them less user friendly and awkward to use, thereby protecting Apple’s unique user experience. Barring the removal of the bounce-back feature from Android devices, at the very least, makers of Android-based mobile devices would be forced to pony up a hefty licensing fee or negotiate a cross-licensing deal, if possible. Either way, Apple wins.

Patent 381 Rears its Ugly Head in Samsung Case 

Apple is confident U.S. Patent 381 is a potential Android killer. In its brief asking the court for preliminary injunctive relief against Samsung, Apple described patent 381 as unbreakable:

“The ’381 patent is a strong, easily understood patent. It is directed to a clever method for displaying images on touch screens: when one uses a finger to drag a displayed page past its bottom edge, for example, and releases the finger, the page bounces back to fill the full screen. The claims of the ’381 patent are so clear that in recent litigation between Apple and Nokia Corporation, neither side asked the court to construe any terms. A simple demonstration proves that Samsung’s products infringe. Moreover, the Patent Office confirmed the validity of all twenty claims of this patent in a reexamination initiated by Nokia, which included the best prior art references Nokia could find.”

Samsung appears to be in trouble regarding Apple’s infringement claims of patent 381, but Samsung has its own cache of patents to fight back with. And the South Korean company has done just that by counter-suing Apple with a patent infringement case of its own claiming Apple infringed on its wireless networking technology patents.

In fact, despite threats early on, with Apple COO Tim Cook vowing, “we will not stand for having our IP ripped off,” Apple backed away from going after the Palm Pre for infringing patent 381. It became obvious; Palm had its own arsenal of patents that could leave Apple red-faced for allegedly dipping into Palm’s intellectual property to develop the iPhone. However, HTC is not so lucky. And Google is also in dire straits when it comes to patents, as evidenced by its whining this past week.

HTC on the Ropes

The Taiwanese company HTC is also in dire straits due to its weak cache of patents to defend itself against Apple’s attacks. The U.S. International Trade Commission already ruled during a preliminary hearing that HTC infringed on two of Apple’s older Macintosh patents. HTC plans to appeal the ruling. But that’s just the beginning. Apple’s patent 381 is included in the federal suit against HTC and an infringement ruling in Apple’s favor on the spring-back scrolling feature could seriously weaken HTC.

Because of the Trade Commission’s ruling and the strength of Apple’s case in federal court, HTC delayed its Australia launch of the Galaxy Tab 10.1

How will this all end? These lawsuits could go on for years before they are eventually settled out of court. But Apple’s arsenal of patents gives it the upper hand.