The International Trade Commission (ITC) recently placed an import ban on several HTC devices in the United States for violating an Apple design patent. The ban wasn’t set to take place until April of 2012, but Apple’s win would effectively end HTC’s short-term business in the US if HTC failed to develop a workaround.
Noting that it was already working on “alternate solutions” to sidestep the patent infringement issue when the ITC’s ban was announced, HTC has today confirmed that it has already developed a fix that will keep its Android-powered devices safe from Apple’s lawyers for the foreseeable future.
Bloomberg reports:
HTC Corp. has already completed a technical workaround to skirt a U.S. agency ruling that found a user interface in some handsets infringed an Apple Inc. patent.
“It’s actually quite rarely used,” HTC Chief Executive Officer Peter Chou said of the feature. The company will continue to work withGoogle Inc. to “protect ourselves,” Chou said in a media briefing at the company’s Taoyuan, Taiwan headquarters today.
The patent that HTC infringed on was a system-level part of the Android OS that HTC has now removed altogether. When the ITC ruled its decision two days ago HTC said that the Apple patent was a “small UI experience” that would be easy to remove.
It’s unclear as to if Apple will be able to pursue other Android handset-makers with this same design patent.
