HTC are doing well. They’re doing very well. They arrived in Barcelona, announced three new devices, then took home a huge award. Apple now seem to be flexing their muscles, with an intention to sue HTC for HTC, infringing a massive 20 patents. These apparently relate to the “iPhone’s user interface, underlying architecture, and hardware.”
According to the press release Steve Jobs (CEO of Apple) has thrown his toys out of the pram in quite spectacular fashion…
“We can sit by and watch competitors steal our patented inventions, or we can do something about it. We’ve decided to do something about it. We think competition is healthy, but competitors should create their own original technology, not steal ours.”
We’ll await the HTC response on this. It seems to be a shot across the bows of the mighty Google warship and could mark the beginning of a long drawn-out patent war.
Update – It looks like this is targeted purely at HTC Android devices. Engadget has more.
Update – A list of the federal lawsuit components below..
Link – Apple Press Release
Credit – Danny Count 1 – Patent 7,362,331 – “Time-Based, Non-Constant Translation Of User Interface Objects Between States”
Count 2 – Patent 7,479,949 – “Touch Screen Device, Method And Graphical User Interface For Determining Commands By Applying Heuristics”
Count 3 – Patent 7,657,849 – “Unlocking A Device By Performing Gestures On An Unlock Image”
Count 4 – Patent 7,469,381 – “List Scrolling And Document Translation, Scaling And Rotation On A Touch Screen Display”
Count 5 – Patent 5,920,726 – “System And Method For Managing Power Conditions Within A Digital Camera Device”
Count 6 – Patent 7,633,076 – “Automated Response To And Sensing Of User Activity In Portable Devices”
Count 7 – Patent 5,848,105 – “GMSK Signal Processors For Improved Communications Capacity And Quality”
Count 8 – Patent 7,383,453 – “Conserving Power By Reducing Voltage Supplied To An Instruction Processing Portion Of A Processor”
Count 9 – Patent 5,455,599 – “Object-Oriented Graphic System”
Count 10 – Patent 6,424,354 – “Object-Oriented Event Notification System With Listener Registration Of Both Interests And Methods”