On Friday, the U.S. International Trade Commission announced that it will review the “no violation” ruling on one of the four HTC’s patents Apple is accused of infringing on. The company’s spokesman didn’t elaborate on the decision, simply echoing Apple’s earlier statement that “rivals should create their own original technology, not copy ours”.
In October, ITC had ruled that the California tech giant wasn’t guilty of violating the four phone dialing and power management-related patents belonging to HTC. The original complaint countering Apple’s lawsuit in May 2010 covered the iPhone, iPad and iPod lineups.
As revealed in Steve Jobs’ recently published biography, Apple co-founder was personally interested in the last year’s case against HTC. He considered one of the devices released by the Taiwanese electronics developer to be stolen from Apple’s portfolio. Subsequently, Jobs vowed to go “thermonuclear war” on Android and to destroy the platform.
The final decision on the Apple-HTC case is due next Monday. Originally, the ruling was scheduled for this Wednesday, but the ITC pushed it back for unknown reasons. In July, the commission ruled that HTC had violated two of Apple’s patents.
Both device manufacturers have a few other outstanding complaints filed against each other with the ITC. While Apple sued HTC one more time in July, the Taiwanese handset builder lodged its third suit against the company in September, this time over patents purchased from Google.
Peter Chou, HTC CEO, believes that the company’s business won’t be affected by the ongoing legal opposition. Actually, he considers Apple’s filings to be just “little more than a distraction”.
HTC has also demonstrated interest in settling the dispute. Its $300 million acquisition of S3 Graphics earlier in 2011 is viewed as an attempt to gain leverage on the Cupertino-based company. Apple had been sued by S3 Graphics over image compression-related patents and lost an initial ITC ruling in July. However, the commission overturned the original decision in November. The Taiwanese electronics maker reacted to the reversal by promising to conduct a “holistic reevaluation” of its purchase.
