A court in Tokyo Japan has ruled that Samsung infringed a patent belonging to Apple related to the bounce-back feature on earlier models of its smartphones.

The functionality means that when people scroll through documents of web pages the display bounces back to indicate the end of the image. Samsung has removed this element from its interface on more recent models, replacing it with a blue line at the end of documents.

The ruling comes despite a US Patent and Trademark office decision in April that found the patent for the bounce-back feature was invalid, meaning older Samsung models with the feature could remain on sale.

The Japanese court decision is the latest development in a series of patent disputes between the smartphone giants around the world, as they look to dominate the market.

Earlier this month, the US International Trade Commission banned the import of older versions of Apple mobile devices after ruling that the iPhone maker had violated a patent held by Samsung related to data transmission on CDMA networks.

The most high-profile case between the companies saw Samsung ordered to pay Apple $1.05 billion in damages in August 2012 after being found to have infringed a number of patents belonging to the Cupertino-based company. However, these damages were reduced by 40 per cent in March this year due to incorrect calculations in the earlier ruling.