Apple wins patent war partly from HTC

The International Trade Commission ruled that the U.S. only HTC would have violatedone of the four patents for which Apple had claimed.

Apple won a partial victory in the war against HTC patents for advanced phones,after the International Trade Commission U.S. (ITC) ruled that the Taiwanese company infringed only one of the four patents in a lawsuit filed by rivalestadonidense.

The U.S. commission imposed a formal ban on import HTC phones that infringe the patent, which begins on April 19, 2012.

Experts say, however, that the ITC decision will not hurt the Asian giant, as the rulinginvolves only a patent that HTC, who has time to resolve the matter. HTC gets almost half its revenue from the U.S. market.

"It's a limited victory for several reasons," said Peter Toren, a lawyer specializing in intellectual property law firm partner of Shulman Rogers in the United States. Rogerssaid the ruling does not prevent import as many phones as HTC wants to April.

 

"It gives a lot of time to make a change HTC design, which I understand are alreadyworking," he said. The order becomes effective in April, but the impact is not felt until several months later, "he added.

HTC said Monday that the ruling was a victory for them and said it planned tocompletely eliminate their mobile technology linked to the patent.

The patent in question refers to technology that helps users to click on phone numbers and other data contained in a document, such as email, to dial directly orverbosity.

HTC said it was "satisfied" that the judge has reversed some of the decisions takenearlier by the administrative law judge, who ruled in July that HTC infringed two patents from Apple in the manufacture of its Android smartphone.

Carolyn Wu, Apple spokeswoman, said of the sentence: "We think competition is healthy, but competitors should create their own original technology, not steal ours."