Apple loses a round in its patent war with Samsung

News that a Dutch court has ruled that Samsung has not infringed Apple’s patent on smartphone “pinch-to-zoom” — i.e., the function of zooming on a smartphone screen using a two-finger gesture.  Apple’s billion-dollar patent victory in U.S. federal court in California is surely the big event thus far, but outside the U.S. Apple has been on a bit of a smartphone patent losing streak, with judgments coming down against it in courts in the U.K., Japan, Germany, and now the Netherlands. This is going to be a long war, but so far the result is unclear — both sides have won some important battles.