The end of 2013 is certainly not going in HTC’s favor. Judge Dr. Matthias Zigann from the Munich I Regional Court ruled against HTC, granting Nokia an injunction against all of HTC’s Android powered devices. The ruling will eventually lead to a sales ban of all HTC device due to infringement of Nokia’s EP1148681 patent which covers a “method for transferring resource information” when two devices are paired via NFC or Bluetooth. HTC’s Android devices are still being sold in Germany, but Nokia has the option of posting a 400 million Euro bond to enforce the injunction even while HTC appeals the court’s ruling.
HTC and Google claim that Nokia’s patent should be nullified by the German courts and have filed two separate nullity complaints. Once the ban of HTC phones goes into effect, HTC should be able to circumvent the issue by removing the NFC and Bluetooth data sharing protocols from its phones. While we wouldn’t like to see HTC pushing crippled phones to its customers in Germany, we know that wireless data transfer between two devices isn’t something that’s all too important to the general public.
We’re disappointed to see HTC close out 2013 on a down note, but we have confidence that things will be looking a lot better in 2014.
Source: FOSS Patents
