Ina Fried

Recent Posts by Ina Fried

HTC Exec to Apple: Let’s Make a Deal

Taiwanese cellphone maker HTC appears to be eyeing some sort of compromise in its ongoing patent dispute with Apple.

“We have to sit down and figure it out,” CFO Winston Yung said in an interview with Bloomberg. Yung added that the company is “open to all sorts of solutions, as long as the solution and the terms are fair and reasonable,” and said his company has had “on and off” discussions with Apple.

Earlier this month, The U.S. International Trade Commission issued a preliminary ruling that HTC products violate two of Apple’s patents, sending shares of HTC lower.

As part of its effort to bulk up its patent might, HTC earlier this month acquired S3, a Taiwanese graphics chip maker.

The Apple-HTC spat is just one of the many patent disputes gripping the cellphone industry right now. Microsoft and Motorola are embroiled in their own Android-related patent dispute, while Oracle is suing Google. Nokia and Apple recently settled their disagreements, while Apple and Samsung remain in an ever-escalating patent battle.

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Just as the atom bomb was the weapon that was supposed to render war obsolete, the Internet seems like capitalism’s ultimate feat of self-destructive genius, an economic doomsday device rendering it impossible for anyone to ever make a profit off anything again. It’s especially hopeless for those whose work is easily digitized and accessed free of charge.

— Author Tim Kreider on not getting paid for one’s work