Arguing that its technology is being stolen and vowing to defend its patents, Apple yesterday filed lawsuits against HTC Corp., a smart phone manufacturer used by a number of third parties, most notably Google and Microsoft. The suit represents the latest legal battle in what is quickly becoming an even more crowded and competitive wireless industry.
At issue are a total of 20 patents governing various smart phone and mobile technologies. Apple filed suit on half of those patents with a federal court in Delaware, with the other ten being covered in another suit with the U.S. International Trade Commission. The suits address both hardware and software, as well as touch-screen control and scrolling features, and aims to ban the sale of Google’s Nexus One phone and Microsoft’s Windows mobile devices, both manufactured by Taiwan-based HTC.
HTC was a virtual unknown in the smart phone market until just recently with its support for the Android mobile operating system. It was the first company to unveil a Google phone and has enjoyed success with its Hero model, sold through Sprint Nextel, and the Droid Eris, available from Verizon, as well as its featured Google and Microsoft phones.
Patent suits and legal action are not all that rare in the tech industry. Apple sued Nokia back in December, claiming the company hand infringed on several iPhone patents. In February, Kodak sued both Apple and Blackberry manufacturer Research in Motion, asserting that their smart phones illegally employed Kodak’s digital imaging technology for cameras. Generally, such suits fly under the radar as lawyers on both sides battle it out in court away from the spotlight.
This time however, Apple came out with guns blazing, issuing a press release featuring some tough talk from CEO Steve Jobs. Analysts believe this larger-than-usual media push regarding the legal action is evidence that Apple views HTC’s alleged infringements as a serious threat.
Apple claims they’re simply defending their intellectual property.
“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,” Jobs said in a statement. “We think competition is healthy, but competitors should create their own original technology, not steal ours.”
Even though Apple’s iPhone continues to hold the top spot among smart phones, the marketplace has tightened in the last year or so as more manufacturers and vendors introduce their own models. Android, in particular, has seen remarkable growth, accounting for 3.9 percent of the smart phone operating system market in 2009 after only 0.5 percent the year before.
While HTC has churned out a number of smart phones to compete with the iPhone, the very recent release Google’s Nexus One phone likely was what caught Apple’s attention and led to the current legal action. Like the iPhone, the Nexus One offers a host of applications, GPS and a touch screen. Some experts claim that Apple’s aggressive legal action is a means of slowing down HTC’s growth in theindustry while still others believe this could just be the beginning of a larger strategy to keep hold of its place atop the smart phone market.
The case before the International Trade Commission will proceed first, a standard move in this type of action involving technology because the ITC tends to arrive at decisions much faster than the country’s federal courts. Perhaps more importantly though, and a fact certainly not lost on Apple, is that the ITC has the power to ban a product from being introduced into the U.S. completely, meaning that if Apple wins, the phones HTC has produced to compete with the iPhone may never see shelves in the U.S. again.
We’ll keep track of this story as it unfolds in the coming months. As always, leave us your comments below!
