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Apple sues HTC for patent infringement |
Apple has today filed a lawsuit against Taiwanese smart phone manufacturer HTC for infringing 20 of its patents related to the iPhone's user interface, underlying architecture and hardware. The lawsuit was filed concurrently with the US International Trade Commission (ITC) and in US District Court in Delaware.
"We can sit by and watch competitors steal our patented inventions, or we can do something about it. We've decided to do something about it," said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO. "We think competition is healthy, but competitors should create their own original technology, not steal ours."
Apple said it “reinvented” the mobile phone in 2007 with its revolutionary iPhone and “did it again in 2008 with its pioneering App Store, which now offers more than 150,000 mobile applications in over 90 countries.” It has sold around 40 million iPhones worldwide. Apple's suit is the latest in a string of legal tangles for the company with respect to the iPhone. Reports suggest that while HTC is an interesting choice for a target, Apple chose to sue HTC as a way to slow down its growing clout in the smart phone space that piggybacks on the popularity of Google's Android software platform that HTC smart phones run.
In October last year, Apple was sued by Nokia, which uses the rival Symbian platform that recently went open source, for the infringement of 10 patents owned by the cellphone company. Apple counter sued claiming that Nokia in turn infringed on 13 Apple patents, following which Nokia upped the ante through yet another complaint to the International Trade Commission wherein it said that Apple infringed on seven Nokia patents across its product lines, “in virtually all of its mobile phones, portable music players, and computers." Kodak too recently filed complaints against Apple and Canadian smart phone maker Research in Motion (RIM) with the International Trade Commission. Kodak maintains that the camera technology that the two companies use in the iPhone and BlackBerry, respectively, to preview images infringes on a digital imaging patent that it owns.
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