Apple Sues HTC for Infringing 20 iPhone Patents

Ed Sutherland ()

Apple Sues HTC for Infringing 20 iPhone Patents

Photo: bloomsberries/flickr)

Apple is again back in legal headlines, Tuesday suing handset maker HTC for allegedly infringing 20 unspecified iPhone patents. HTC has designed a number of smartphones powered by Google’s Android mobile operating system.

The lawsuit, filed with the U.S. International Trade Commission and in the U.S. District Court of Delaware, points to the iPhone patents covering user interface and associated architecture and hardware, reports said.

“We think competition is healthy, but competitors should create their own original technology, not steal ours,” Apple co-founder Steve Jobs charged in a statement. Jobs said the company could choose to do nothing or act on its allegations. “We decided to do something about it,” he said.

Today’s words echo an early statement when Apple countersued Nokia, claiming the Finnish company infringed 13 patents held by the Cupertino, Calif. company. “Other companies must compete with us by inventing their own technologies, not just by stealing ours,” said Bruce Sewell, Apple’s General Counsel and senior vice president said in a statement at the time.

The lawsuit against HTC is just the latest in a legal back-and-forth involving Apple and a number of other companies. The ITC recently agreed to investigate Nokia’s and Apple’s competing claims, as well as a lawsuit Kodak filed, alleging the iPhone infringed its patented image preview technology.

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[via AppleInsider and CNET]

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About the author

Ed Sutherland

Ed Sutherland is a veteran technology journalist who first heard of Apple when they grew on trees, Yahoo was run out of a Stanford dorm and Google was an unknown upstart. Since then, Sutherland has covered the whole technology landscape, concentrating on tracking the trends and figuring out the finances of large (and small) technology companies.

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  • Jim H.

    I have no idea if the lawsuit has merit, but I can see where Apple might be feeling frustrated: I see a huge number of smart phones being advertised with no keyboard and large touch screen displays. AFAIK, none of these devices existed before the iPhone, and it’s debatable if they would ever have existed in that form had the iPhone not been introduced.

    Meanwhile, analysts estimate the component costs of the iPad, and the media reports a 54% profit margin for Apple as if R&D costs didn’t exist. (Or manufacturing, shipping, retail overhead, etc., but those at least are costs shared by other manufacturers. I suspect Apple’s R&D costs are far greater than, say, Dell.)

    Jobs is right: compete with Apple, but don’t violate their patents.

  • nacra

    I’m surprised this hasn’t been more of a story. I mean, look around. From phones to computers, hardware and software, there are a lot of products that “borrow” from Apple’s design. It is amazing that there is so little innovation happening in what is arguably one of the world’s biggest, most dynamic and fastest growing industries.

  • nabil2199

    @Jim H: how is life in the infamous reality distortion field? :D

  • Jim H.

    @nabil2199: Your point being? As a Mac user, I’ve bitched about Apple lots of times, and I know perfectly well that they didn’t invent the accelerometer (got one in my camera) or touch-screen technology. As far as I can see, though, they integrated a set of technologies into the iPhone in a way that smart phone manufacturers never had — but shortly after the iPhone took off, those other manufacturers followed suit pretty quickly.

    I don’t consider Apple to be as consistently groundbreaking as many people do, but IMO, the iPhone actually qualified.

    If you’re referring to my cost comments, as a consumer and not a stockholder, I’m frankly not that crazy about Apple’s profit margin. But the iPad component cost argument drives me as crazy as the “CD-R prices show how overpriced music CDs are” argument, for the same reasons.

    Or perhaps you’re just being vacuously snarky. Clarification required.

  • http://www.nooksurfer.com NookSurfer

    Kudos to Apple, they finally decided to put their feet down. I knew there was a reason why all the newer SmartPhones had a similar look and feel. At the time I really couldn’t put a finger on it…but now it’s dawned on me… =) j/p I think when this is all said and done, and the dust have settled, Apple will have created a bigger and better device, and someone else will once again be playing catch up and trying to replicate Apple’s success.

  • Steve M

    Sad to see Apple turn into one of those companies. I guess it was inevitable with an OS like Android to compete with. Open source will always win out over proprietary.

    Steve Jobs has forgotten his roots. This little 40 second YouTube video will help explain how the IPhone came to be.

    Steve Jobs: Good artists copy great artists steal – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW0DUg63lqU

  • Stathis D

    @Jim H. I’m afraid that you’re clueless. Phones and PDA/Phones with virtual keyboards exist since the dark ages. I have a Ericsson P900, a P910 and an old HP iPaq phone from 2003. Actually whatever Apple claims preexisted in other devices.

  • http://www.bedbugshowtogetridofthem.org/ Kristin Mattews

    Maybe Apple is threatened with Android, making it react this way. That is how things run nowadays and it really is expected that sooner or later something like this will happen. Apple is not that special to be exempted from this truth. As Stahis said, all features that Apple has been claiming could be found on other phones as well.

  • J.M. Heinrichs

    1. The touch screen keyboard was a feature of the GoPoint OS c. 1990, and was followed by a similar capability on the MessagePad of 1993.
    2. Steve’s comment on good artists versus great artists is a citation from George Handel, d.1759.

    Cheers

  • Jim H.

    @Stathis D: Point taken. That’s why I said AFAIK. (I’m a bit bemused thinking of 2003 as the “the dark ages,” though.)

    My basic point wasn’t that Apple invented any of those technologies (honestly, I knew they didn’t) — but I think they they combined them into a product that created a pretty good impersonation of a paradigm shift in the smart phone market. One does get the feeling that other manufacturers looked at the iPhone and its success, and said “hey, let’s do that too.” Or perhaps the iPhone is just a point on a tech adoption bell curve, and not the reason this type of phone is becoming ubiquitous.

    Anyway, I never meant to imply that I thought those features constituted a basis for patent violation claims — I assume they have something else in mind, and we’ll see if it has legal grounding.

  • Gogu

    So, Apple got scared of it’s biggest competitor HTC… Sueing HTC only makes Apple weak and HTC more powerfull. For so many years apple didn’t change their technology and design and now that HTC came up with some better and improved technology Apple is trying to slow them down.