Apple secures ITC import ban against HTC devices

Apple scored a significant legal victory earlier this week when the ITC ruled that HTC’s Android based smartphones infringe upon one of the claims Apple patent #5,946,747

Apple scored a significant legal victory earlier this week when the ITC ruled that HTC’s Android based smartphones infringe upon one of the claims Apple patent #5,946,747. The patent in question relates to the analysis and linking of data structures. Specifically, the patent covers instances where an application parses information and passes it onto the API of another program. One oft-cited example of the aforementioned patent is data-tapping, such as when the iPhone’s native mail client detects a phone number within a message and makes it a clickable item that subsequently launches the devices dialer app.

As a result of the infringement, the ITC ruled that HTC will be banned from importing offending devices into the US beginning on April 19, 2012. Refurbished models of offending devices can be imported up until December 19, 2003 assuming that they’re solely used for replacing faulty devices under warranty.Responding to the ruling, HTC issued the following statement to Boy Genius Report.

We are gratified that the commission affirmed the judge’s determination on the ‘721 and ‘983 patents, and reversed its decision on the ‘263 patent and partially on the ‘647 patent. We are very pleased with the determination and we respect it. However, the ‘647 patent is a small UI experience and HTC will completely remove it from all of our phones soon.

As for the implications of the victory, some speculate that this gives Apple ammunition in its full-fledged assault against Android to the extent that the patent relates to the Android OS itself, and not some UI tweaks implemented by HTC. Responding to that, Googe’s Android guru Andy Rubin said yesterday:

The majority of these patents [in Apple's complaint against HTC] were claimed in the operating system itself, but actually in this case what was allowed...is some user interface feature of an application, not the operating system itself, so that's why I'm very optimistic in basically my desire to achieve patent peace on the overall platform.

So with HTC already promising to deliver a workaround to the patent in question, it remains to be seen how it plans to do so without sacrificing usability in the process.

• Smartphones
• Apple
• HTC
• legal