HTC can’t seem to catch a break is its ongoing patent battle with Apple. On Friday, an ITC judge granted an Apple motion which effectively stripped HTC of five patents which it acquired from Google last summer. The Apple motion was granted since the ITC judge claims that HTC failed to secure all rights to the patents in question, an issue which could have been avoided if Google has not set limitations on the patents when handing them over to HTC.
According to FOSS Patents, the ruling can be appealed. But if HTC wants to make sure they are properly armed when battling things out with Apple, Google may have to join in on the complaint against Apple rather than letting HTC use its patents against them.
At this point, we’re fed up with the amount of time each of these companies is spending on suing each other. It seems like we write more stories about patent disputes than we do about new handset releases.
If you’re interested to know which five Google patents HTC will not be able to use against Apple, check out the links below.
- U.S. Patent No. 6,473,006 – “method and apparatus for zoomed display of characters entered from a telephone keypad”
- U.S. Patent No. 6,708,214 “hypermedia identifier input mode for a mobile communication device”
- U.S. Patent No. 6,868,283, U.S. Patent No. 7,289,772 on a “technique allowing a status bar user response on a portable device graphic user interface”
- U.S. Patent No. 7,020,849 – “dynamic display for communication devices”
Although I have an HTC phone ATM, I am neither pro nor anti Apple. I do feel that the mobile business as a whole would benefit if all this patent backstabbing came to an end. It is almost akin to kids in the playground with their “My dad is bigger than your dad” childish games. I feel that at the end of the day it is we consumers who suffer. Why can’t they just get on with making better products for the people who pay their wages, US THE CONSUMERS!