Apple sues HTC for patent infringement!

For Apple’s legal team, it seems three is the magic number. Not content with counter suing Nokia and being sued by Kodak, Apple have launched yet another law suit this time against Taiwanese smart phone manufacturers HTC. The reason? Patent infringement. Or so Apple has alleged.
Yes, following ongoing legal wranglings with Nokia and Kodak, the Cupertino outfit have now filed suit against HTC claiming the smartphone manufacturer has violated patents relating to the iPhone’s “user interface, underlying architecture and hardware”. Speaking about the legal action, Apple CEO Steve Jobs commented “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.”
Some of the 20 patents Apple claim have been infringed include Unlocking A Device By Performing Gestures On An Unlock Image, something that could quite easily cover any touchscreen phone without a hardware unlocking button, List Scrolling And Document Translation, Scaling, And Rotation On A Touch-Screen Display which relates to how scrolling menus bounce when you reach the end (among other things) and Automated Response To And Sensing Of User Activity In Portable Devices which refers to the proximity sensor turning off the screen when the iPhone is held to your ear on a call.
At this point, it’s very early days with HTC yet to answer to the claims and a court date potentially months (or even years away). We won’t see the end to this one just yet. At this point, you may be asking yourself why HTC? All 3 of the above features have all been seen in notable handsets from the likes of Nokia, Samsung and the Palm Pre so why are Apple only going after HTC? Well, that’s anyone’s guess, but the cynical amongst you may see this as a thinly veiled dig at Google. Whilst HTC manufacture both Windows Mobile and Android handsets, the Taiwanese outfit has been a major supporter of Google’s OS from day one.
With Apple and Google originally co-existing quite amicably (the iPhone uses Google Search and Maps after all), the relationship started to turn sour after the arrival and subsequent success of Google’s Android smart phone operating system which has clearly moved into iPhone territory. Now, with the release of the HTC manufactured Google Nexus One, Google have moved from software to hardware and it comes as no coincidence that Apple have decided that now is the time to act. Looking closely at the patents, we can see that it is Android that is mainly being implicated.
Google have even gone as far as to issue a statement following the law suit, commenting “We are not a party to this lawsuit. However, we stand behind our Android operating system and the partners who have helped us to develop it.” Whether this means standing behind their partners with moral support or some financial clout remains to be seen but this one’s definitely set to run for some time. Keep an eye on the blog for more information on this as and when we get it.