U.S. ITC finds HTC infringed upon Apple patents

15 years ago

“Google’s Android mobile operating system is in serious trouble,” Florian Mueller reports for FOSS Patents.

“Bloomberg reports that an ITC judge determined that HTC infringes two of ten Apple patents asserted in investigation no. 337-TA-710,” Mueller reports. “Today’s decision is a so-called ‘initial determination’ by an administrative law judge (ALJ). Those determinations are reviewed by the six-member Commission, the highest decision-making body at the ITC.”

Mueller reports, “Depending on which two patents HTC infringes and on whether the Commission affirms the ALJ’s decision, this could in a worst-case scenario result in an import ban against many or even all Android-based HTC products in the U.S. market. In a somewhat less extreme scenario, HTC might have to remove certain functionality from its products, and that could result in a significant or even substantial degradation of the user experience and quality of those devices.”

“Depending on whether the asserted patents relate to HTC’s own extensions of Android, they may affect only some or theoretically even none of the other makers of Android-based devices,” Mueller reports. “However, should one or both of those patents read on the common Android codebase used by all device makers, then Apple could soon be in a strong position to obtain import bans against dozens of device makers.”

Much more in the full article, including the reminder that, beyond this development, there are 16 more Apple patents still in play against HTC in various actions, here.

“HTC said in a statement today it was found to have infringed two of 10 Apple patents asserted in the case. Administrative Law Judge Carl Charneski’s finding, which wasn’t immediately available for viewing, is subject to review by the full six-member commission in Washington,” William McQuillen reports for Bloomberg. “HTC will ‘vigorously fight these two remaining patents through an appeal before the ITC commissioners who make the final decision,’ Grace Lei, general counsel for the Taoyuan, Taiwan-based company, said in an e-mailed statement.”

McQuillen reports, “Nokia Oyj, which had been targeted in the same complaint, reached a settlement with Apple last month. Mountain View, California-based Google wasn’t a party in the case.”

Full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: Amazingly, we may finally be starting to see some justice!

A sickening chill just swept through the executive offices of many a fake iPhone assembler. And they likely aren’t feeling all warm and toastie inside over at ~~Microsoft~~, er… Google, either, because this time around there’s no poorly-written contract signed by an unprepared sugared water salesbozo.

• We’ve been pushing the state-of-the-art in every facet of design… We’ve been innovating like crazy for the last few years on this and we’ve filed for over 200 patents for all of the inventions in iPhone. And we intend to protect them. – Apple CEO Steve Jobs when unveiling iPhone, January 9, 2007

• We like competition as long as they don’t rip off our IP, in which case we will go after them. We will not stand for having our IP ripped-off and we will use any weapons at our disposal [to stop it]. – Apple COO Tim Cook, January 21, 2009

Don’t steal IP.