RubberBanding
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Apple wins injunction against Motorola in Germany over 'rubber-banding' patent
Hope and pray all you want, but the patent wars are far from over. The latest chapter in the ongoing game of IP Risk hands Apple a victory over the Google-owned Motorola Mobility in Germany. If you thought the recent licensing deal would put the kibosh on further flare ups between the two, you were sadly mistaken. The Munich I Regional Court awarded Cupertino an injunction against Moto devices over the so-called "rubber-banding" patent, which relates to the bounce back animation when scrolling to the bottom or top of a list. The fate of infringing phones isn't set in stone yet, as there's still room for appeal, though, a €25 million bond would score Apple an enforceable preliminary injunction. One relatively simple solution would be for Moto to implement the stock Android "glowing" animation, which would bypass Apple's claims. Though, an even better solution would be for all parties involved to quit their bickering over patent minutia and focus on making the best products possible.
APB Reloaded keeps us up to date on development
It's always good to see a games company keep the lines of communication open in regard to an upcoming title. It's especially nice to see those frequent morsels of communication presented in an open and downright amusing fashion! The team behind All Points Bulletin: Reloaded is certainly managing to do just that, as we can see in its most recent update. According to none other than the COO/CTO for GamersFirst, Bjorn "TechMech" Book-Larsson, the team currently working on ABP: Reloaded has made a huge find in terms of server bugs. Apparently, the way the current in-game death camera is coded, the entire sector hits a lag spike -- or as he puts it, "take[s] a brief 100ms moment of silence" when a player is killed. This, in turn, causes a lot of the rubberbanding that players see on their end. Finding this bug means that the team is now hard at work on a fix, and Book-Larsson is hopeful that we may even see it released to closed beta players within a matter of days. If you're curious about the progress GamersFirst is making on APB: Reloaded, then be sure to head over and check out the newest blog post or go get signed up for closed beta! [Thanks, Connor!]
