We may only be two weeks into 2014, but it appears HTC’s fortunes may be turning for the better. After posting preliminary numbers on a profitable Q4, a German regional court has decided to throw out Nokia’s patent suit against HTC. Nokia claims that HTC’s products infringe on one of its patents which allows phone calls to be made while an over-the-air (OTA) software update is downloaded on the device. We don’t yet know why the court decided to throw Nokia’s case out, but we’re going to assume it’s because an over-the-air software update it treated like any other data and should be accessible during phone calls as GSM standards dictate.
HTC is still working on its appeal of Nokia’s NFC and Bluetooth data transfer patent victory from late December. Hopefully the courts will agree with HTC and Google which would allow HTC to sell the HTC One and its other Android phones in Germany without having to push out a software update to disable the NFC and Bluetooth data transfer functionality.
Source: ZDNet
