Apple had asked the commission to block imports of Motorola phones such as the Droid and Droid X that run Google Inc.’s Android software, claiming they infringed on its patents.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

The organization found that HTC devices infringed on two claims related to an Apple patent. However, the ban will not take effect until April, the ITC said in a ruling, giving time for carriers to make transition plans and for HTC to demonstrate ways it has avoided infringement (by working around the patent, dropping infringing features or other means).

“Notice is hereby given that the U.S. International Trade Commission has found a violation of section 337 in this investigation and has issued a limited exclusion order prohibiting importation of infringing personal data and mobile communications devices and related software,” the agency said. “The Commission has determined that exclusion of articles subject to this order shall commence on April 19, 2012.”

HTC will be able to import some refurbished products to satisfy repair claims on already sold products, but will not be able to bring new products into the country after April 19, unless the ruling is reversed or it can show its products no longer infringe the patent in question.

The ruling had been delayed several times.

HTC said in a statement that it was pleased the commission reversed a ruling that said HTC infringed on another of Apple’s patents, and that it narrowed the ruling on the patent in which it did find infringement.

“While disappointed that a finding of violation was still found on two claims of the ’647 patent, we are well prepared for this decision, and our designers have created alternate solutions for the ’647 patent,” HTC said.

Apple didn’t comment directly on Monday’s ruling, instead merely reiterating a past statement that “we think competition is healthy, but competitors should create their own original technology, not steal ours.”

Here’s the ruling:

Usitc Ruling Apple Htc

The International Trade Commission in Washington on Wednesday is expected to rule on whether some phones made by HTC Corp. violate Apple’s patents. The ruling could lead to a ban on handsets sold by the Taiwanese company, which uses the Android operating system and is the No. 3 smartphone provider in the U.S. market, according to research firm Nielsen.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

The ITC had been scheduled to issue its decision on the matter tomorrow, but on Monday said it would delay it until December 14. So it will be another nine days before we see a final verdict in the case.

If the ITC rules in Apple’s favor and determines that HTC’s Android smartphones violate the four patents at issue on the case, it could ban their importation. And that would be a nasty setback for HTC, which might then miss out on the lucrative holiday shopping season.

A victory for HTC, on the other hand, could set the stage for a settlement with Apple, which was recently vindicated in another ITC case in which it was accused of violating the patents of HTC’s S3 Graphics unit.

“Notice is hereby given that the U.S. International Trade Commission has determined that no violation of section 337 of the Tariff Act of 1930 (19 U.S.C. § 1337) has been shown in the above-captioned investigation and that the investigation is terminated,” according to the ruling, which was posted by the Web site FOSS Patents.

Taiwanese cellphone maker HTC had scooped up S3 in hopes of strengthening its patent position against Apple, which has its own complaint against HTC before the U.S. trade body. A ruling in that case is expected next month, FOSS Patents said.

In a statement to AllThingsD, HTC said it was disappointed: “While the outcome is not what we hoped for, we will review the ruling once the commission provides it and will then consider all options, including appeal.”

The ITC had previously narrowed the scope of HTC’s case against Apple with regards to the S3 patents. HTC said that the ITC last week launched a new investigation based on a separate patent complaint filed by S3.

The battle between HTC and Apple is just one of many skirmishes dotting the mobile landscape, a battlefield that includes disputes between Oracle and Google, and Microsoft and Motorola, to name just a few.

In one important case, the International Trade Commission on Monday has scheduled a hearing to review Microsoft Corp.’s patent-infringement charges against Motorola Inc., which target smartphones running Google’s Android operating system. Google last week agreed to pay $12.5 billion for the mobile-phone business now called Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc., largely to acquire patents that are seen as legal weapons against Microsoft, Apple Inc. and other Android rivals.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

This is the second ITC complaint Apple has lodged against HTC, who it has accused of infringing some 20 patents related to the iPhone’s graphical user interface, underlying architecture and hardware. The latest complaint hasn’t yet been made public, so it’s not entirely clear what Apple’s up to here. That said, it’s likely to be bolstering its original argument with additional patents, following an April ITC staff recommendation that its allegations against HTC be dismissed. And, of course, it’s another broad warning to the industry. If you’re bringing a new smartphone to market, you had better make damn sure it doesn’t infringe on Apple’s IP.

As Apple CEO Steve Jobs said in a press release announcing its first suit against HTC: “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.”

In a statement, HTC slagged Apple for the sudden escalation of hostilities between them.

“HTC is dismayed that Apple has resorted to competition in the courts rather than the market place,” said general council Grace Lei. “HTC continues to vehemently deny all of Apple’s past and present claims against it and will continue to protect and defend its own intellectual property as it has already done this year.”

Further Reading:

• Apple Sues Nexus One Maker HTC Over iPhone Patents
• Apple Sues HTC [Complete Court Filings]
• Apple vs. Google: Game On

The U.S. International Trade Commission issued a split ruling today on Kodak’s suit charging that Apple’s iPhone and Research In Motion’s BlackBerry violate its patent on an image-preview function in smartphones. The commission did some upholding, some modifying and some clarifying (mostly not helpful to Kodak’s cause) and ultimately sent the preliminary findings back to the administrative law judge for further review. The commission’s new target date is Aug. 30 — unless the judge sees the need for more time.

Kodak looked for the brightest spot it could find in the news and expressed continued confidence. After-hours investors, not so much.

The suits appear part of a broad strategy by Samsung to fight Apple’s lawsuit over the design of its smartphones and tablet computers with a barrage of litigation around the world.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

$1 billion.

“This is a lot of money, big money,” Perez told Bloomberg, adding that his company “deserves to win.”

Problem is, it lost once already. An ITC judge ruled in January that Apple and RIM didn’t violate the patent at issue here and declared the patent invalid because it’s an obvious variation of an earlier invention.

Now, it’s certainly possible that the commission could overturn that ruling. And, if it does, it’s also possible that it could block imports of the infringing products, which would obviously be a big incentive for both Apple and RIM to settle. That’s what Samsung and LG did when Kodak sued them over the same patent.

But the commission hasn’t overturned the ruling. It hasn’t even decided whether to review it. And even if it does, Kodak itself is facing patent infringement charges from Apple and a suit from RIM challenging the validity of a number of its patents, including the one in the ITC case. Those suits will certainly complicate any potential royalty negotiations.

So it’s a bit premature for Perez to be offering a forecast on patent royalties, though it is doing wonders for Kodak’s share price, which at $3.44 is up about 10 percent on Perez’s bloviating. A nice little pop for a company that lost nearly half its market value last year.

Might want to take a picture of that, Kodak, it will probably last longer.

This marks the first time the Rochester, N.Y.-based company has received what is known as a negative initial determination recommendation from the trade body. An administrative law judge at the ITC found Kodak’s patents invalid and not infringed by Apple’s iPhone or RIM’s BlackBerry devices. The final decision is expected May 23.

Kodak reports fourth-quarter earnings Wednesday.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

Rambus, whose nominal specialty is designing ways for chips to pass data back and forth but which is better known for more than a decade of bitter legal battles, earlier this month filed a complaint with the ITC, saying that products from several companies contained chips that infringe on its patents.

As anyone who’s been paying attention to the numerous patent battles around smartphones knows, the ITC is generally seen as a fast track to a settlement of a patent dispute. Since federal courts are slow and litigation is expensive, companies often go to the ITC ostensibly to block the import of products found to infringe on patents. Since practically every technology product is built outside the U.S., sales of an infringing product can be subject to an exclusion order, the usual outcome when a violation is found.

What’s interesting is the wide range of companies that Rambus has named in its complaint: Hewlett-Packard, Cisco Systems, Nvidia, Broadcom, Seagate, Motorola, Garmin, Asus and Hitachi are among the better known ones. The full list contains 34 companies, including some subsidiaries.

Some of the patents involved in this complaint were the subject of a prior case that Rambus took to the ITC against Nvidia. The commission ruled the patents–known as the Barth family of patents–were valid and issued an exclusion order, prompting Nvidia to come to the table and sign a licensing agreement in August. Rambus is obviously looking for a similar outcome from Broadcom and Freescale, which it says are among those now infringing on the Barth patents.

Additionally there’s another set of patents known as the Dally family, which Rambus didn’t invent but to which it holds a license. The patents are owned by MIT and are based on the work of Bill Dally, a former MIT professor of electrical engineering who’s now at Stanford University. The patents had been licensed exclusively to a small private firm called Velio Communications, where Dally had been CTO and which was acquired by the chip maker LSI Logic in March of 2004.

In a twist that could happen only in the strange world that is patent law, Rambus acquired the exclusive license to Velio’s serial interface patents–the Dally family–in a separate deal in the waning months of 2003. The irony is that LSI is among those being sued for infringing on the Dally patents. Some M&A lawyers at LSI must be kicking themselves today.

Among the phones that Sony alleges are infringing on its technology are the Accolate, Encore, enV Touch, Glance, Lotus Elite, Neon, Quantum and Rumor Touch.

The latest legal challenge adds to an already crowded docket of wireless competitors making patent-related claims. Just a partial list of the court battles has Nokia against Apple, Motorola against Microsoft, Apple against HTC and Oracle against Google.

Microsoft general counsel Brad Smith predicted last month that the various players will probably agree on some sort of appropriate royalty streams covering modern smartphones. in the meantime, it looks like the lawyers for all the cellphone makers will remain gainfully employed in 2011.

Late Wednesday, its Motorola Mobility subsidiary slapped Microsoft with a lawsuit accusing the company of infringing 16 of its patents in a variety of products– including Windows, Exchange, Messenger, Outlook, Windows Marketplace, Bing Maps and Xbox.

“[We are] bringing this action against Microsoft in order to halt its infringement of key Motorola patents,” Kirk Dailey, corporate VP of intellectual property at Motorola Mobility, said in a statement. “Motorola has invested billions of dollars in R&D to create a deep and broad intellectual property portfolio and we will continue to do what is necessary to protect our proprietary technology.”

Microsoft, for its part, seems largely unfazed by Motorola’s right-back-at-ya maneuver. Indeed, in a statement, Horacio Gutierrez–Microsoft’s deputy general counsel of intellectual property and licensing–essentially said the company was waiting for it. “This move is typical of the litigation process and we are not surprised,” he said. “We remain confident in our position and will continue to move forward with the complaints we initiated against Motorola in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington and with the International Trade Commission (ITC).”

According to a prehearing examination of the patents at issue in the case by the staff of the U.S. International Trade Commission, Apple hasn’t provided enough evidence to establish a violation of its rights. The ITC’s early read on 13 patents Cupertino has accused Nokia of violating is that some were not violated at all and some aspects of others are invalid.

Now this doesn’t mean that Apple is destined to lose this particular battle; ITC Judge Charles Bullock isn’t obligated to follow his staff’s recommendation. But it is something of a setback for Apple, which has asked the Commission to block the import of Nokia phones into the States.

In a complaint filed Monday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware, Apple (AAPL) accuses HTC of infringing two additional patents and reasserts its allegations of infringement of two others.

The two new patents:

• 6,282,646: “System for real-time adaptation to changes in display configuration”
• 7,380,116: “System for real-time adaptation to changes in display configuration”

And the patents included in the original suit:

• 7,657,849: “Unlocking a device by performing gestures on an unlock image”
• 7,383,453: “Conserving power by reducing voltage supplied to an instruction-processing portion of a processor”

So, two new patents added to the original list of 20. Not exactly the opening of a new front in this particular battle, though it’s certainly an expansion of it. Meanwhile, the U.S. International Trade Commission continues to investigate Apple’s infringement claims against HTC and vice-versa.

The U.S. International Trade Commission has announced plans to formally investigate HTC’s allegations that Apple (AAPL) infringed upon its mobile phone patents.

“The U.S. International Trade Commission (USITC) has voted to institute an investigation of certain portable electronic devices and related software,” the ITC announced. “The products at issue in this investigation are portable electronic devices that utilize certain power management methods and may incorporate hardware and software for telephone directories within mobile telephone systems….The complainant requests that the USITC issue an exclusion order and a cease and desist order.”

The agency is already investigating HTC for a similar but broader complaint filed earlier this year by Apple, so this is familiar territory. A decision against either company could see some or all of its phones and mobile devices blocked from import into the U.S., though that seems unlikely.

“As the innovator of the original Windows Mobile PocketPC Phone Edition in 2002 and the first Android smartphone in 2008, HTC believes the industry should be driven by healthy competition and innovation that offer consumers the best, most accessible mobile experiences possible,” said Jason Mackenzie, vice president of North America, HTC Corporation, in a statement announcing the litigation. “We are taking this action against Apple to protect our intellectual property, our industry partners, and most importantly our customers that use HTC phones.”

The intellectual property to which Mackenzie refers here isn’t clear, since the company has not disclosed the patents it believes Apple (AAPL) violated. Which is a little odd, considering the breadth and heft of Apple’s 20 patent claim against HTC.

That HTC hasn’t announced the patents it believes Apple to have infringed seems…unusual. Unless, of course, there’s not much to them, in which case it might make sense to make a big splash with a press release that prevents observers from assessing the viability of the claims it’s making against Apple. Also unusual, the fact that HTC hasn’t yet filed a lawsuit in federal court, which might suggest a lack of confidence in its case.

HTC declined to provide me with a copy of the suit or a list of the patents involved.

Reached for comment, Apple declined to offer one, referring me to its original complaint against HTC, which can be found here.

UPDATE: Here’s a copy of HTC’s suit.

Further Reading:

• Apple Sues Nexus One Maker HTC Over iPhone Patents
• Apple Sues HTC [Complete Court Filings]
• Apple vs. Google: Game On
• HTC May End Up Bringing Knife to Apple Gun Fight
• HTC to Apple: We Built a Touchscreen Phone Before You Did

That the agency has decided to investigate does not mean it has an opinion on the merits of the case. Still, the move has got to weigh heavily on HTC, which hasn’t yet even issued a formal response to Apple’s (AAPL) claims. That said, the company seems to be taking it all in stride. Said CEO Peter Chou: “It’s part of business. We need to face it and everyone can talk it through.”

Further Reading:

• Apple Sues Nexus One Maker HTC Over iPhone Patents
• Apple Sues HTC [Complete Court Filings]
• Why HTC, Apple? And Why Now?
• Apple vs. Google: Game On
• What, HTC Worry?
• HTC May End Up Bringing Knife to Apple Gun Fight
• HTC to Apple: We Built a Touchscreen Phone Before You Did

“Through what charitably could be called an attempt at legal alchemy, Apple employs revisionist history, misleading characterizations, unsupported allegations and flawed and contradictory legal theories to turn these fruitless negotiations into a multi-count federal lawsuit,” Nokia (NOK) said in papers filed in federal court in Wilmington, Del. (full document embedded below).

“These non-patent counterclaims are designed to divert attention away from free-riding off of Nokia’s intellectual property, a practice Apple evidently believes should only be of paramount concern when it is the alleged victim,” the filing continued.

“Legal alchemy”? Where’s Nokia looking for legal inspiration, the Salem Witch trials?

Anyway, a blistering condemnation, but no more so than the one Apple (AAPL) let fly against Nokia in December, when it accused the company of copying the iPhone after finding itself caught flat-footed by the device’s success.

In 2007, Apple introduced the iPhone a ground-breaking device that allowed users access to the functionality of the already popular iPod on a revolutionary mobile phone and Internet device. The iPhone is a converged device that allows users to access and ever expanding set of software features to take and send pictures, play music, play games do research, serve as a GPS device and much more….The iPhone platform has caused a revolutionary change in the mobile phone category.

In contrast, Nokia made a different business decision and remained focused on traditional mobile wireless handsets with conventional user interfaces. As a result, Nokia has rapidly lost share in the market for high-end mobile phones. Nokia has admitted that, as a result of the iPhone launch, the market changed suddenly and [Nokia was] not fast enough changing with it.

In response, Nokia chose to copy the iPhone, especially its enormously popular and patented design and user interface….

As Anssi Vanjoki, Nokia’s executive Vice President and General Manager of Multimedia, stated at Nokia’s GoPlay event in 2007 when asked about the similarities of Nokia’s new offerings to the already released iPhone: “[i]f there is something good in the world, we copy with pride.” True to this quote, Nokia has demonstrated its willingness to copy Apple’s iPhone ideas as well as Apple’s basic computing technologies, all while demanding Apple pay for access to Nokia’s purported standards essential patent. Apple seeks redress for this behavior.

Seems to be quite a battle in the offing here. That said, we’re not likely to see a victor declared for another year or two. According to Nokia’s filing, the Delaware case probably won’t go to trial until spring of 2012. The International Trade Commission, however, is expected to issue its decision on the matter in June 2011.

031110 Nokia’s Opening Brief in Support of Motion to Dismiss _D.I. 26_ –

“We only learned of Apple’s actions based on Apple’s press release. We have not been served any papers yet so we are in no position to comment on the claims. We respect and value patent rights but we are committed to defending our own innovations. We have been innovating and patenting our own technology for 13 years.”

– HTC’s first statement on Apple’s suit

Now that it has had some time to recover from the intellectual property lawsuit sucker punch Apple threw at it yesterday, HTC has issued a more carefully crafted positioning statement on the matter. More thoroughly lawyered than its predecessor, this statement touches on issues of consumer choice and the effect Apple’s (AAPL) attack might have on the company’s business.

“HTC believes that consumer choice is a key component to success in the smartphone industry and this is best achieved through multiple suppliers providing a variety of mobile experiences,” the company said. “HTC has focused on offering its customers a uniquely-HTC experience through HTC Sense and its broad portfolio of smartphones. HTC does not believe this lawsuit poses a short-term material impact to its business nor will it affect its Q1 2010 guidance.”

Aside from the absence of any mention of Android, HTC’s statement is pretty much what you’d expect. It is interesting, though, that the company doesn’t see Apple’s suit undermining its 2010 guidance.

Obviously, this particular battle could take years to play out, but that doesn’t mean it won’t have short-term repercussions. Certainly, it’s not hard to imagine carriers thinking twice about adding HTC’s new smartphones to their lineups given the possibility that the International Trade Commission could halt shipments of infringing HTC phones if it finds in Apple’s favor.

Beyond this, there’s the issue of the design changes that would need to be made to infringing HTC devices to make them noninfringing. There’s a cost to that as well, potentially substantial.

Further Reading:

• Apple Sues Nexus One Maker HTC Over iPhone Patents
• Apple Sues HTC [Complete Court Filings]
• Why HTC, Apple? And Why Now?
• Apple vs. Google: Game On