HTC Apple Fight: HTC Phones Banned in US
Taiwanese Smartphone maker HTC Inc lost a patent infringement battle with US based Apple Inc. As a result certain of HTC handsets will be banned from selling in US markets w.e.f 19th April 2012. Apple challenged the “Data Tapping” feature used by HTC. The “Data Tapping” feature enables users to gather embedded information of any users and use it. HTC in an official statement said that they respect the decision taken by International Trade Commission and would soon withdraw the feature from their phones.
HTC Vs Apple: HTC Loses Patent Battle
“We are very pleased with the determination and we respect it”
— HTC’s Statement
The market and business analyst are of the opinion that, such ruling will not effect HTC’s US business instead the company engineers can work on some other new technology and relaunch the phones in a new way to US customers.
“We see a very minimal impact of this as there could be a workaround for the same technology that HTC can implement in the next four months. It’s a sigh of relief for HTC because they had to give in to only one feature”
— Jayesh Easwaramony (Frost & Sullivan)
Apple has filed almost 10 patent suits against HTC. Mostly the lawsuits are filed with phones using Google’s Android. One of the most famous patent infringement battle that Apple has filed is with South Korean smartphone maker Samsung Inc. where the ruling was in favour of Samsung
