iPhone News Updated

iPhone 5 related? Apple partially wins over HTC in patent tug of war

iPhone 5 related? Apple partially wins over HTC in patent tug of war

Every computer nerd knows that Apple invented the “patent infringement game”, if a company copies their idea; they automatically get sued.

Is HTC in trouble?

It didn’t surprise me when I found out that Apple won a lawsuit against HTC (Dragging along Google with them) for infringing 10 of their patent notes, although; the ITC judge has agreed only with 2 out of the ten patents.

This is a major problem for Google, because according to BNet website, majority of the copyright claims that Apple has pointed out against HTC is actually pertaining to the software that’s being used on the devices themselves — Android.

As stated by Foss Patents the two patents that are deemed to have been infringed by HTC are:

-U.S. Patent no. 5,946,647 on a “system and method for performing an action on a structure in computer-generated data.” (in its complaint, Apple provides examples such as the recognition of “phone numbers, post-office addresses and dates” and the ability to perform “related actions with that data”; one example is that “the system may receive data that includes a phone number, highlight it for a user, and then, in response to a user’s interaction with the highlighted text, offer the user the choice of making a phone call to the number”)

-U.S. Patent no. 6,343,263 on a “real-time signal processing system for serially transmitted data” (while this sounds like a pure hardware patent, there are various references in it to logical connections, drivers, programs; in its complaint, Apple said that this patent “relates generally to providing programming abstraction layers for real-time processing applications”)

In my opinion, one of the two patents (No. 6,343,263)  is rather hard for HTC to find a work around. Probably because majority of smartphones (Mainly Android devices) have implemented real-time signal processing on its API, as well as with certain real-time audio processing (Hardware such as DSP) while calls are being held and editing media through applications being used on the phone.

“We are highly confident we have a strong case for the ITC appeals process and are fully ready to defend ourselves using all means possible,” said HTC general counsel Grace Lei in a statement, on Saturday. ”We strongly believe we have alternate solutions in place for the issues raised by Apple. We look forward to resolving this case,” she said.

This has been a loss for HTC but it’s only the beginning, Apple doesn’t seem to be satisfied since they’ve just filed 5 new patent infringements against the Taiwanese company. HTC maybe having fun with their gains on the smartphone market, but in this industry… it’s bound to be cut off by Apple.

Apparently, Apple is expected to release a brand new smartphone later this year, the iPhone 5 — and to get more customers, it’s highly possible that Apple wants to block some HTC devices that are currently available in the US market like Sprint’s HTC Evo 3D, HTC Sensation 4G and the rumored new HTC Puccini tablet too, which is the first device of the Taiwan-based company to rival the iPad and the iPad 2.

Additional reporting by: Joan Lee

[Thanks: http://www.popherald.com]

Comments are closed.