Apple Inc scored a narrow victory against Taiwan’s HTC Corp in a patent lawsuit over smartphone technology that will set the stage for further battles between rival makers in the fiercely competitive market. In a case seen as a proxy for a larger fight between Google Inc’s Android operating system and Apple’s iOS, the U.S. International Trade Commission ruled that HTC infringed on one of four patents Apple had disputed and imposed a sales ban on some of the Taiwan maker’s phones. While the ruling is unlikely to hurt HTC as much as initially feared because it will have time to work around the offending technology and has until April before the ban becomes effective, it offers Apple ammunition to pursue other makers it believes infringe on its technology. “This is one skirmish in one battle, which is forming a much larger war and each side has got some ammunition left,” said David Wilson, a London-based partner at the intellectual property group with Herbert Smith LLP. The patent in question, ‘647, relates to technology that helps users clicking on phone numbers and other types of data in a document, such as an email, to either dial directly or click on the data to bring up more information. As it is widely used in almost all smartphones, industry experts foresee similar rulings should Apple bring other cases.Apple’s battle with Samsung Electronics Co Ltd, which also uses Android software and is a supplier as well as competitor, has been especially bitter, with some 30 legal cases in 10 countries.
ANDROID DOMINATES ASIA
Apple’s founder, the late Steve Jobs, was quoted in his biography as saying that he was going to “destroy Android, because it’s a stolen product. I’m willing to go thermonuclear war on this.” But the Android system dominates the Asia-Pacific ex-Japan smartphone market with a 53 percent share this year versus 15 percent for Apple’s iOS, according to technology research company IDC, and Android is not likely to lose much ground.
