“An Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) at the ITC (United States International Trade Commission) has not found a violation by Apple in connection with four HTC patents,” Florian Mueller reports for FOSS Patents.
“This relates to HTC’s first ITC complaint against Apple, filed in May 2010 in response to Apple’s March 2010 actions against HTC at the ITC and in federal court,” Mueller reports. “HTC’s first ITC complaint was just a first (and weak) warning shot.”
“I didn’t take it seriously from the day it was filed. The patents look weak. Even if they were successfully enforced, I doubt they would pose a serious threat to Apple. At the time HTC filed its complaint, its patent position was very weak and this was basically just a way of indicating a willingness to fight,” Mueller reports. ” HTC still has the weakest patent portfolio of the three leading Android device makers, but it has since bought patents from various sources and brought additional complaints against Apple (with the ITC as well as in federal court)… Besides buying up patents from smaller patent holders, HTC also received patents from Google and asserted nine of them against Apple (in August).”
Mueller reports, “But Google’s support for one of its three most important OEMs — almost a year and a half after Apple’s patent enforcement against Android started — may prove ‘too little, too late.'”
Read more in the full article here.
tick… tick…. tick. Time is running out on Google’s IP ripoff Android. Oh, there will still be an Android, but it will have to operate less and less like iOS.
They can always go back to the original Android, the version with a hardware keyboard. Throw RIM a few bucks and they won’t complain.
or become less and less “free” !
But they already knew that didn’t they?
Buying time hoping for a settlement and license. This is Apple and they will not license it. It’s what makes their products unique among the cloners. So you cloners are in big poo poo.
…and the walls came tumbling down
My god ALJ HTC ITC FOSS, damn that was hard to read