Apple Wins Injunction Banning Import of HTC Devices

Newly accepted submitter squish18 writes "All Things D reports that Apple has won an injunction banning the import of some HTC phones starting in April 2012. The ruling by the ITC stems from two claims of the '647 patent concerning software used to enter personal data in mobile devices. It is interesting to note that the ITC has also reversed previous rulings regarding regarding infringement of two other '647 claims, as well as patent '263 claims." It looks like Apple's victory is relatively minor. They lost claims on all patents except for one, and HTC/Google can work on implementing similar functionality in a non-infringing way.

Comments

Re:even if it's minor, pretty ridiculous

[makomk]

So the non-frivolous claim on which Apple actually prevailed was essentially a regex to find things that look like phone numbers in unstructured text documents, which then link to a dialer app?

It's slightly more complicated than that IIRC, but pretty much.

has it always been like this?

[Sebastopol]

The flurry of international tablet lawsuits seems much more rigorous than I remember for any past technology. Was it always this bad?

Smart phones didn't sue each other this badly. Nor did DVD manufacturers. AMD & Intel went at it hard during the 80's & early 90's. Sony & Betamax sorta duked it out. But the tablet wars seem to be nutso.

At least the economy for lawyers is booming...

Re:has it always been like this?

[drinkypoo]

Smart phones didn't sue each other this badly.

Smartphones are STILL suing each other, including involvement by Apple. DVD was handled by a consortium and there's no money in going after unlicensed players, although the low-hanging fruit is picked just to keep the people making such things on their toes. Intel totally boned AMD. Betamax was a Sony technology, ITYM Betamax and VHS, but putting onerous licensing terms on a technology and killing it is actually called "Betamaxing".

Legal costs

[multiben]

I would love to know what fraction of total expenditure for some of these companies is spent on legal tangles. All these cost are of course passed on to the consumer at the end of the day, so the longer this ridiculous farce of a patent system is allowed to continue the longer it will be that we continue to pay inflated costs.

Re:Minor victory?

[sideslash]

This should also be want Slashdot wants.

I like diversity in Slashdot opinions. If all Slashdot readers were Apple fanboys like you, it would be boring around here.

Isn't competition what drives innovation? Where's the innovation if everyone just does what everyone else is doing?

It's ironic that you chose the word "competition" to describe forcing people out of a space via an effective monopoly.

USPTO in bed with Apple?

[viperidaenz]

uspto.gov requries the use of Apple Quicktime to view images. Whats wrong with gif, jpg, png...

Re:Evil Monopoly

[abhi_beckert]

Sure, companies are choosing to act the way they are, but the current patent system is incentivizing this behavior. The question should be whether there is a system with better incentives, not whether companies should stop doing what they are doing, because some companies will behave responsibly, but others invariably won't and you have to expect that behavior.

I'm not convinced any companies, even patent trolls, are truly acting irresponsibly. It's impossible to know if a patent is/isn't valid without going to court. And it's impossible to know if a patent is/isn't being infringed without going to court.

This leads to disagreements between patent holders and potential licensors about just how much should be paid in any licensing agreement, or whether any licensing fees should even be paid at all. To make matters worse, the courts are making stupid decisions all the time.

In my mind, this is a clear situation where we need to blame whoever wrote patent law in the first place for failing to predict the mess they created. And blame more recent government(s) for failing to do anything about it.

But how to solve it? That's the trillion dollar question.

Re:Evil Monopoly

[ccalvert]

The point is that Apple is suing HTC because they are using a map to pinpoint a location. I bet that in the last month, there have been a thousand courses taught in colleges and high schools that tell students how to pinpoint locations on maps. Why isn't Apple suing those community college profs instead of HTC?

Do I really need to answer that?

Who came up with mapping technology first? Was it perhaps Google Maps?

Re:Evil Monopoly

[Solandri]

Say what you want about Apple, they *do* spend billions researching new technology.

Apple is pretty close to the bottom of the barrel when it comes to R&D spending by tech companies in recent years. I think this is part of the reason they so irk technology enthusiasts. We don't like having proof that marketing > technology rubbed in our faces.

Re:Patentable inventions must be novel and unobvoi

[gl4ss]

meh it wasn't. I think you're forgetting how 1996 was. you could select email addresses back then in some sw and send email. even 1993 you could find prior art.

when was lynx made? because what it actually does if there's an email tag is analyze the input and make it clickable and give you a choice to send email, no? the patent is so broadly worded that it's rather irrelevant if there's the tags around it or not.