HTC may be facing a sales ban in Germany after the courts ruled that HTC’s devices did infringe on Nokia’s EP 1 148 681 wireless data transfer patent, but HTC will not be going down without a fight. HTC is fighting on three different fronts with a patent invalidity claim, an injunction appeal and software modification to remove the infringing wireless data transfer protocols.
Since Nokia’s EP 1 148 681 patent covers wireless data transfer over Bluetooth and NFC, Google has also filed a patent invalidity claim since Nokia could technically sue any smartphone or tablet manufacturer that implements the Android Beam feature on their devices.
HTC devices can still be purchased in Germany, but the final outcome of this issue could have serious implications on HTC’s financials since Germany is the largest market for mobile devices in Europe.
“In addition to appealing today’s decision, we will continue with our invalidity action pending before the German Federal Patents Court.
Even though we believe the first instance court should have sided with HTC on the issue of infringement, notwithstanding the appeal that we will file, we are also exploring possible modifications for our handsets to avoid infringement of the patent in question.”
– HTC
Source: ZDNet
