HTC Infringed Apple Patents, Says ITC's Initial Determination 230
CWmike writes "A judge at the U.S. International Trade Commission has made an initial determination that HTC infringed two Apple patents, HTC said late Friday. If the judgment is made final, HTC could be banned from importing phones to the U.S. It's the latest blow to Google's Android operating system, which is being attacked by competitors including Apple, Microsoft and Oracle. The initial determination will now be reviewed by a larger panel of ITC judges, who can uphold or reject it. The two patents appear to be fundamental to Android, according to Florian Mueller, a patent expert. 'They are very likely to be infringed by code that is at the core of Android,' he wrote in a blog post. The same patents are also at the heart of a dispute between Apple and Motorola, he said."
Patents (Score:5, Interesting)
And the patents (from http://fosspatents.blogspot.com/2011/07/itc-judge-finds-htc-in-infringement-of.html [blogspot.com]) are:
U.S. Patent No. 5,946,647 on a "system and method for performing an action on a structure in computer-generated data" (in its complaint, Apple provides examples such as the recognition of "phone numbers, post-office addresses and dates" and the ability to perform "related actions with that data"; one example is that "the system may receive data that includes a phone number, highlight it for a user, and then, in response to a user's interaction with the highlighted text, offer the user the choice of making a phone call to the number")
U.S. Patent No. 6,343,263 on a "real-time signal processing system for serially transmitted data" (while this sounds like a pure hardware patent, there are various references in it to logical connections, drivers, programs; in its complaint, Apple said that this patent "relates generally to providing programming abstraction layers for real-time processing applications")
I think I violated these patents just reading this article.
Re:Did Apple just lap Microsoft? (Score:4, Interesting)
I think Jobs and co. look at the windows phones and laugh themselves silly. They look at android and think, "damn, if google pulls it's head out of it's ass this could be trouble."
Re:What else is new. (Score:4, Interesting)
I agree but for other reasons:
Software is already protected by by copyrights, having patent protection on software is double-dipping.
Patents on software don't make sense. THE COMPUTER ITSELF IS THE INVENTION and it is by definition, a multi-purpose machine. Patenting techniques you do in a computer is like patenting specific ways of driving a car, or combinations of musical notes.