S3 Graphics deal: Increasingly unlikely to help HTC against Apple

Previously, “I explained why Apple won’t just settle for money like most other patent holders do),” Florian Mueller reports for FOSS Patents. “I consistently pointed out that HTC’s best chance to force Apple into at least a partial cross-license would probably be S3 Graphics’ assertions against Apple. HTC is in the process of acquiring S3 for approximately $300 million.”

“Over the last couple of days, some additional information concerning the ITC investigation of S3’s complaint against Apple (investigation no. 337-TA-724) became available,” Mueller reports. “Based on this new information, it seems increasingly unlikely to me that HTC can get much leverage out of that process.”

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Mueller reports, “It looks like HTC is going to have to use some other patents than the four at issue in that proceeding in order to put Apple under serious pressure. Right now it seems that the validity of those four S3 patents is uncertain, and even the worst-case scenario for Apple may just come down to a need to equip its Macintosh computers with NVIDIA chips. The iPhone, iPad and iPod product lines aren’t even affected at all. Against that background, Apple can apparently keep pursuing its multiple lawsuits against HTC.”

Much more in the full article – recommended – here.

Related articles:
U.S. ITC says Apple’s Mac OS X violates S3 patents bought by HTC; clears iOS devices – July 26, 2011
HTC willing to negotiate with Apple over patents – July 26, 2011

HTC willing to negotiate with Apple over patents

11 Comments

  1. it looks like HTC needs a better hobby. Again, there are too many meaningless jobs out there for people and this is a prime example. THESE are the kind of people we need out of work. Thin the herd.

  2. Other MAC’s graphic card are Intel and AMD. Why don’t Apple let Intel and AMD know that they shall either go get the S3 license or sue the hell of HTC. I bet the combine of Intel and AMD patents will crush HTC in no end.

      1. If you walk into the Cerritos Mall in California, you pass a M·A·C store just before getting to the Apple store. I had a good chuckle the first time I saw that.

  3. it comes down to a money game in the end…

    AMD and Intel would rather give Apple a bj rather than lose their business… nVidia have a licence agreement… So this shows that it’s clearly a graphics processing issue… Hence it’s up to the graphics provider to get the licence (if it wasn’t nVidia wouldn’t have bothered paying for their licence in the first place…).

    Hence Apple will simply put it to Intel and AMD to get their act together and get a licensing agreement sharpish, or face losing the Apple multibillion contracts! It’s that simple really… Apple will simply laugh off any attempt by HTC, till such a time as the other two sort their act out…

    No story here, other than showing that HTC prefers to piss money away on lawyers rather than spend a fraction of that cost on employing engineers who might actually build them something innovative!

    As far as I can tell, HTC announce a super cool product, right before an Apple product release, then 3-6 months after the apple product has launched, their team of monkeys have reverse engineered the latestest IPhone, made a piss poor job of copying and putting it together, and THEN they release their “new” product…

    Waste of space really!

    What I really don’t get are the idiots who delude themselves into believing that the android base of phones have an equal touchscreen technology to the iPhone! Seriously though! WTF?!? They’re all shit, I hate them, I tried them and it clicked half a centimetre away from where my finger was! I mean come on half a centimetre on a 4 cm screen is equal to shooting for France and hitting India!

    Useless!

      1. I don’t know whether you don’t understand the analogy(1) or are so sarcastic that you come full circle and sound serious!

        (1) just in case… Analogy – a comparison between two things for the purpose of explanation…

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