Apple’s been quite the zealous defender of its patent profile lately, going after Samsung and, most recently, HTC. It’s bad news for HTC in this latest development, with the US International Trade Commission ruling that HTC did in fact violate two of the ten patents Apple named in its complaint.
The ITC rejected most of Apple’s claims, but did recognize that HTC was violating its patent rights concerning a “system and method for performing an action on a structure in computer” and a “real-time signal processing system for serially transmitted data”.
This finding, made by an ITC judge, will now be reviewed by a six-person commission before it’s official. That could mean that, unless HTC works out an agreement with Apple, Apple’s request to block HTC imports could be enforced. HTC is prepared to fight the ruling, defending the novelty of its products, but it’s not off to a great start, even with eight of the ten claims dismissed.
Realistically, we’re not going to see HTC give up on the US market over something like this; it may have to shrug and pay up, but its smartphones will continue to make it into stores.
