Apple Sues HTC For 20 Patent Violations In Phones

eldavojohn writes "Taiwanese HTC is being sued by Apple for 20 patents regarding the many phones HTC manufactures. Steve Jobs was quoted as saying, '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.' Apple has similar patent litigation with Nokia and may be trying to scare the rest of the industry into licensing patents similar to the Microsoft-Novell and Microsoft-Amazon deals regarding patents covering Linux functionality."

Comments

Re:Maybe Apple should pay their royalties first?

[sopssa]

And not just iPhone - iPad name was also taken, but they still just went for it.

I half agree

[SuperKendall]

Putting all the pieces together in a new configuration is just engineering, it isn't necessarily innovation and it isn't patent worthy.

This is what I have stated in every post (third time now).

Besides, there had been messaging phones that flipped the screen when you went into sms mode. Basing that on an accelerometer instead of a keyboard slide out is trivial, it's just using a different kind of switch.

Hmm... on that, I disagree since the switch is driven programmatically, not in response to physical changes by the user (device rotation). But again, the monitor example covers exactly that.

I think the whole reason Apple didn't go after Nokia is because their patents were on shaky ground to begin with.

Except that Apple DID file a countersuit, claiming Nokia violated some patents. And again, the patents Nokia was suing over were all related to the GSM standard which Nokia has agreed to license to anyone for a fee. But they didn't want just a fee from Apple, they wanted boundless access to some patents Apple owned.

Not that I'm trying to bash Apple, I appreciate what they did bringing smartphones to the consumer market, but I think they have a comeuppance coming for all the dirty tricks they like to pull (you should see what they do to their own employees!).

I don't think they have pulled very many dirty tricks - though I think this HTC suit is one of them.

The Nokia thing is simply Nokia trying to leverage patents they had supposedly put forth for a standard to shake down Apple, which is a lot dirtier than a straightforward "hey you are using my patents please stop" lawsuit.