“HTC Corp. Asia’s second-biggest maker of smartphones, can tweak the technology in its handsets to avoid a U.S. trade agency ban,” Tim Culpan reports for Bloomberg. “Dealing with the threat from Apple Inc.’s and Samsung Electronics Co.’s new devices may prove tougher.”
“Keeping the handsets on the market solves HTC’s immediate challenge after becoming the top selling vendor in the U.S. Samsung’s Galaxy Nexus and Apple’s faster, ‘Siri’-enabled iPhone hit the market within the last quarter, posing a new threat to HTC’s place in the $262 billion global mobile-phone market,” Culpan reports. “The Taoyuan, Taiwan-based company is forecast to post its slowest annual sales-growth and first profit decline since the 2009 economic crisis.”
“The ITC, the agency empowered to block imports of products that infringe the patents, found in Apple’s favor for one of four patents the Cupertino, California-based company alleged HTC breached. Apple’s so-called ‘647 patent covered a feature in which the phone recognizes a telephone number so it can be stored in directories or called without dialing,” Culpan reports. “The result, while less than Apple sought, marks its first victory in patent cases and strengthens the argument that Google’s Android ‘ripped off the iPhone,’ as the company’s late founder, Steve Jobs, once claimed.”
Culpan reports, “Apple also has civil patent infringement cases against HTC and Samsung.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]
Baby steps… One little victory at a time.. Eventually the total will illustrate that Android was stollen …. It is going to be like a Doberman snapping and taking bites foe Google/Android… Annoying and distracting and eventually fatal… Add to that Siri on all Apple products reducing Google ability to transfuse its cash life blood by bypassing its ads… A long an painful death… They will wish they were “beleaguered ” Rim before this is over.
The only thing that can stop Apple is auto correct… To useful to turn off , but with a mind of its own….:=)
Death by thousands cut.
Whats funny and disgusting is how some of the press and bloggers online has dismissed this issue as nothing. Problem already solved by HTC and Google. What they fail to mention is the fact that HTC and Google got caught violation Apple IP… That should be front and center.
what i think is funny is that htc and google have said, effectively, that “it is no big deal and we can quickly work around this, and it is a little-used feature anyway.” so if they can so quickly work around it and it isn’t used much anyway then why did they go to the trouble to copy apple? answer: htc and others spend, effectively, zero dollars per year on research and development. the approach of “fast following” or “quick copying” doesn’t work when the other company takes the time to figure things out and then patent it. so many companies for so long have been in the mode of fast followers (cough cough dell et al. cough cough) that this approach has been taken for granted. it doesn’t appear that people have caught on to the fact that, among other disruptions apple has caused, it has disrupted this business model to the point where it will be corporately life-threatening to use it in a market where apple exists.
They CLAIM the problem has been solved. That’s the key.
I’ve actually read this patent and it covers ALL data detector features in the iPhone – phone numbers, addresses, etc. The Android manufacturers and Google have a LOT of work to do to get around this patent. Removing the feature is obviously the easy way out but will leave them with a crippled UI.
I suspect what Jobs was more broadling implying when he said Google ripped Apple off was more than just narrow patent issues but the whole ‘idea’ of iPhone (how it works with a touchscreen, apps i.e the ‘concept’ . A concept totally different from the Blackberry like phone that google was originally working on).
unfortunately as lawyers have pointed out creativeness in general can’t be patented or copyrighted. It’s like an artist paints a picture, in tech law it seems the judges are more interested in who made the formula of the paint colors rather thinking about the ‘picture idea ”.
(I know my explanation is kinda of crude but I think most will get the idea I’m trying to express)