Apple licensed iOS feature to Nokia, offered Samsung same deal

Court papers have revealed that the normally closed-doored Apple has licensed software patents out to other companies, including Nokia and IBM. It also offered a similar deal to arch-nemesis Samsung in November 2010, but the settlement negotiations fell apart – no one seems to know exactly why.
Apple referenced this failed accord in its bid to have Samsung Galaxy devices banned in the US, a bid that Judge Lucy Koh chucked out of court at the tail-end of last week.
Nokia and IBM agreed to pay Apple to use patent number #7,469,381 which, as patent fans will know, relates to iOS’s ‘scrollback’ behaviour.
In iOS, when you scroll beyond the boundaries of a document or web page, you’re treated to some grey background action before the subject bounces back to fill the screen – something that Nokia pays Apple royalties to include on its smartphones.
It may seem like a pretty trivial feature to the average smartphone user, but if the past twelve months have taught us anything, there’s really no such thing as a pretty trivial feature in patent disputes.