ITC rules HTC infringed two Apple patents
By Speedway
on
Friday, July 22, 2011
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HTC released a statement on its website stating the judge had ruled it had infringed two of the 10 patents Apple submitted. However the decision by Judge Carl Charneski is not final; it’s subject to review by a six-member commission in Washington, where HTC has also confirmed it will fight the decision:
Grace Lei from HTC said: “We are highly confident we have a strong case for the ITC appeals process and are fully prepared to defend ourselves using all means possible. We strongly believe we have alternate solutions in place for the issues raised by Apple. We look forward to resolving this case, so we can continue creating the most innovative mobile experiences for consumers.”
According to All things Digital the two patents are:
5,946, 647: A system and method for performing an action on a structure in computer-generated data and 6,343,263: A data transmission system for serially transmitted data.
Writing on his blog intellectual property activist Florian Mueller stated this could have a far-reaching effect not just for HTC, but for Android: 'Those patents are apparently infringed by code that is at the core of Android. It's telling that those two patents are also at issue between Apple and Motorola (and the '263 patent was also used by Apple against Nokia). … This could (in a worst-case scenario) result in an import ban against all Android-based HTC products in the U.S. market’
This is the latest in the long-running series of disputed between HTC and Apple. The ITC previous ruled that Apple is infringing the patents of S3 Graphics, which was acquired by HTC earlier this year for 300 million. We'll have to wait until later this year to find out if the decision is upheld.
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