“The ITC staff’s initial position on a potential import ban against HTC’s Android-based devices was that such a sanction ‘is not contrary to the public interest,’ especially since other devices (devices made by other companies as well as HTC’s own Windows Phone-based products) could easily replace HTC’s Android devices,” Florian Mueller reports for FOSS Patents. “However, the ITC staff has softened its stance and now advocates a ‘narrow exception’ that would allow HTC’s 4G-capable Android devices to be unaffected for a period of six months following an exclusion order.”
“For HTC, being able to continue to sell 4G phones would greatly reduce the impact of an import ban (and for now it’s not even clear whether there will be an import ban at all) during the exception period. HTC already sells mostly 4G phones in the U.S. market, and in the event of an import ban against its 3G devices, consumers seeking to buy an HTC product would opt for a 4G phone,” Mueller writes. “In this scenario, HTC would benefit in another very important way from having positioned itself as the leader in 4G devices.”
Mueller writes, “From Apple’s point of view, even an import ban with an exception would be a milestone. This is the first litigation Apple ever brought against Android, and regardless of its actual business impact, Apple wants a victory that it can build upon. If one or two patents are held valid and infringed by Android, Apple can claim that Steve Jobs was right in calling Android a ‘stolen product.’ In any event, Apple will continue to assert many other patents in order to identify a set of winning patents with which it could have major disruptive impact on Android. Once Apple has its “winning team” in place, it can go against all Android device makers and, potentially, Google itself.”
Much more in the full article, including a “major factual error” in the ITC’s position, here.