The US Patent and Trademark Office has awarded Apple a patent which it will definitely use to launch a fresh legal assault on Android.

Apple claims that the ability of a smartphone to switch from portrait to landscape mode by simply turning it, a feature synonymous with Android, was actually created by themselves. And now, the US PTO has awarded it the patent for the same.

“A computer-implemented method, comprising: at a portable multifunction device with a touch screen display and one or more accelerometers, displaying information on the touch screen display in a portrait view or a landscape view based on an analysis of data received from the one or more accelerometer,” Apple’s description of the patent reads, Patently Apple reports.

The iPhone maker, no doubt sour about Android cruising into the lead in the sector, has been lobbing lawsuits at Android smartphone makers including HTC and Samsung for a long time; with a view to either stall the growth of the platform or cash in on it.

As TechEye notes, the company has now got a fresh arsenal to file more lawsuits, claiming that its technology has been infringed.

Interestingly, the technology patented by Apple has been around for the past ten years and has even been demoed by Barry James Folsom of Radius to Computer Chronicles. Someone even posted the demonstration on YouTube to show how unoriginal the idea is (Apple's 'creation' of the technology dates back to just 2007).