HTC to Apple: From Hell’s Heart I Stab at Thee …
A new twist in Apple’s pitched patent battle with HTC.
HTC on Tuesday brought counterclaims against Apple, using a pair of patents it recently acquired from Hewlett-Packard.
Filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, the counterclaims allege that much of Apple’s hardware — everything from the MacBook Air to the iPhone and iPad — infringe U.S. Patent No. 7,571,221, “Installation of network services in an embedded network server.” And they further claim that Apple Remote Desktop and Apple Profile Manager violate U.S. Patent No. 7,120,684, “Method and system for central management of a computer network.”
HTC acquired both of these patents from HP in December 2011 — well after Apple first sued it, alleging infringement of some 20 patents — in an effort to bulk up its patent portfolio (that effort is ongoing). And now, with its plan to sue Apple with a handful of patents borrowed from Google foiled, it has finally unsheathed them. Question is, are they sharp enough to draw blood?
Apple did not respond to a request for comment.
