The U.s. International Trade Commission has ruled that HTC infringes on two patents of which Apple is the owner. It seems to basic techniques, which may have a lot of HTC devices, the patents.
In the opinion of the U.s. ITC judge must still be confirmed by a six-man commission, reported Bloomberg. HTC, however, has already indicated that the decision will be contested. In addition, would the Taiwanese smartphonefabrikant methods to violation of the aforementioned patents to prevent, as was a spokesman to know. Apple declined to comment on the case. If the commission decision confirms, in the extreme case, the import of HTC’s Android in the United States are prohibited. HTC gets about one-third of its revenue from the United States.
It comes down to the patent numbers 5,946,647 and 6,343,263, claims AllThingsD. The patents describe, respectively, a technique to perform an action on a data structure by a computer is generated, and a technique for real-time serial data sent to process. It seems that this very general principles that may in many or all of HTC’s be used, says patentspecialist Florian Mueller. Apple claims that Motorola, with its devices of these patents violates, potentially all Android devices of these patents.
In the conscious indictment where HTC guilty was found, claimed Apple initially, that infringement was made on a total of ten patents. Although HTC only for two patents to be guilty it seems, there are still other lawsuits, where Apple still sixteen other patents used against the Taiwanese phone maker. Apple asked the ITC for an import ban of HTC devices. It is unclear whether that prohibition is to come; although often, such a prohibition is requested, it is not often pronounced.
HTC is also Microsoft been involved in patentzaken. Recently it became known that the manufacturer this per sold Android phone 5 $ paid to Microsoft. Also other makers of Android smartphones have been indicted, including Motorola and Samsung. Google itself was, as the creator of the mobile OS, sued by Oracle.
There are many sounds that the weak position of Google in the field of intellectual property is a big threat for the Android operating system. The search giant wanted to previously, Palm and the patents from Nortel over to that area to reinforce it. Palm, however, went to HP, while the Nortel patents were won by a consortium including Apple, Microsoft and BlackBerry-maker RIM. A takeover of RIM by a steeply falling share price has been the subject of overnamegeruchten, would be for Google comfort can offer.