Computerworld - The partial legal victory that Apple won Monday against HTC won't affect either company's short-term sales but could play an important part in Apple's long-range attempt to stymie Android's march, expert said today.
On Monday, the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) ruled in favor of Apple in a 20-month case against Taiwanese smartphone maker HTC and its Android-based devices. Apple had accused HTC of violating a total of 10 of its patents, and sought an outright ban on U.S. sales of the rival's devices.
Yesterday, the ITC said that, starting April 19, 2012, HTC will be barred from importing phones that violate one of the 10 patents. The patent relates to "data tapping," technology that lets a user tap, say, an address or a phone number in an email address to pull up a map in another app or dial that number.
But analysts believe that the ban won't immediately change the dynamics of the U.S. smartphone market.
"We expect this ITC ruling will be appealed and won't be material to Apple or HTC shipments in the U.S. through [the first half of 2012]," said Brian Marshall, an analyst with International Strategy & Investment Group (ISI), in an email today. Only in the longer term, Marshall added, would a ban have any impact on the iPhone's share of the U.S. market.
Florian Mueller, who writes the popular FOSS Patents blog, weighed in as well.
"This ruling falls far short of anything that would force HTC out of the U.S. market in the near term," Mueller wrote Monday.
But it seems unlikely that HTC will wait for the April deadline, saying today that it will strip the offending feature from its phones.
"The '647 patent is a small UI experience and HTC will completely remove it from all of our phones soon," said HTC general counsel Gracie Lie in a statement. An HTC spokesperson declined to identify which of its smartphones violate the '647 patent, the one the ITC ruled the company infringed.
HTC also claimed victory in the ruling.
"We are gratified that the Commission affirmed the judge's initial determination on the '721 and '983 patents, and reversed its decision on the '263 patent and partially on the '647 patent," said Lie, referring to other patents that Apple had claimed HTC violated.
The '263 patent was one of two an ITC judge said HTC had violated in an initial ruling last summer. The Monday decision by the ITC tossed out that patent, related to real-time signal processing. According to Mueller, the '263 patent would have been a much more potent weapon in Apple's hands than the '647 case it won.
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