Apple sues HTC over phone patents

Robert Hallock 2 Mar, 2010 at 10:54am ET Article published in Tech

Apple today announced that it has filed a lawsuit against HTC Corporation with the US ITC and the US District Court in Delaware with allegations that HTC has infringed on 20 Apple patents.

“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,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “We think competition is healthy, but competitors should create their own original technology, not steal ours.”

The patents in contention are related to iPhone hardware and interface technology, though their specifics have not been detailed by either party. Speculation, meanwhile, suggests that the suit is primarily concerned with Apple’s patent on multi-touch technology, which HTC and Google recently worked to implement on the Nexus One.

It is not clear at this time what actions Apple has requested of the court to address this dispute.

Comments

2 Mar 2010 ~ 2:00pm AlexDeGruven Raise your hand if you didn't see this coming.
2 Mar 2010 ~ 2:45pm Thrax Icrontic saw it coming!

It is anybodyâ€™s guess as to where the conflict goes from here, but make no mistake that it is hair trigger away from going nuclear with lawyers, injunctions and an endless string of appeals.

As a note, Ars Technica confirmed that one of the patents cited by Apple today is indeed multi-touch.

This whole thing is amusing, though, because the timing is absurdly conspicuous: "OH SHIT, ANDROID AND HTC ARE GETTING POPULAR. LET'S SUE THEM AND IGNORE THE INSIGNIFICANT PALM CORP. WHICH ALSO HAS MULTI-TOUCH, BUT ISN'T A THREAT TO US IN THE SLIGHTEST."
2 Mar 2010 ~ 3:27pm AlexDeGruven The idea of patenting multi-touch is (if you'll pardon the pun) patently ridiculous, since essentially every touch sensor made has the ability to detect multiple touches. It's more software/programming patents which are (mostly) just utterly stupid.
2 Mar 2010 ~ 4:16pm Snarkasm The more amusing point is that they're suing only HTC - not all Android handset makers, not Google, not Palm... they're picking on the OEM because they don't have their own patents to fight back with.

Fuck Apple and software patents. Nothing will stop me from buying the HTC Desire when it comes out.
2 Mar 2010 ~ 7:40pm ardichoke I've seen this coming for sooooo long. I didn't expect Apple to go after the handset manufacturer though, I figured they would go after the OHA since their patent is (iirc) a software patent, not a hardware patent. Then again, I could be wrong and IANAL
2 Mar 2010 ~ 10:24pm rayle As an Apple user, I have to say, Apple are really starting to annoy me with their bullying of customers and competitors. Seriously, this is nothing more then a childish "Moooooom! They're copying me!" situation.
4 Mar 2010 ~ 12:58pm test_tube_tony apple - FAIL
palm - WIN
:P lol. I love my pre.