HTC has claimed victory over Apple in a closely watched intellectual property case for the smartphone industry, despite a US court ruling that imposes a ban on the import of some of HTC’s handsets into the US.
The Taiwanese company said the final ruling by the US International Trade Commission “declared an actual victory for HTC” because it found that HTC had only infringed on one patent out of 10 complaints made by Apple, and rejected two of the four claims on the patent that had been upheld in an earlier decision. The court also gave HTC until April 19 next year to comply with the ruling.
“Since the infringing elements identified by the ITC involve and impact only a very minimal part of the user interface, we will remove it as soon as possible and sell non-infringing products,” HTC said.