Well well well, what a day for HTC today. Waking up to news this morning from the Interwebs, HTC quickly found itself embroiled in a lawsuit from Apple stating that HTC has infringed on several patents (Count ‘em, twenty). Steve Jobs is quoted saying:
“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,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “We think competition is healthy, but competitors should create their own original technology, not steal ours.”
HTC’s responded to the news:
We only learned of Apple’s actions based on your stories and Apple’s press release. We have not been served yet so we are in no position to comment on the claims. We respect and value patent rights but we are committed to defending our own innovations. We have been innovating and patenting our own technology for 13 years.
In the meantime, we all know Apple wasn’t really going against HTC, but in fact trying to hit Google where it hurts: their main, supporting manufacturer/developer of Android handsets. So Google decides to release a statement in HTC’s defense:
“We are not a party to this lawsuit. However, we stand behind our Android operating system and the partners who have helped us to develop it,”…in and email response to TechCrunch.
This just goes to show that Apple is intimidated and utterly fearful of Google’s Android operating system. Think I am wrong? Why didn’t Apple sue Motorola did they? Hmmmmm. Although Android has not had as great sales success as Apple’s iPhone, dollar for dollar spent on iPhone vs. Android advertising, it would appear that Google is the winner.
Now Nokia can now use this case for assistance with their own infringement lawsuit against Apple and Apple’s counter-suit against Nokia. These two suits will have direct correlation with each other in the end result. That you can bet on that!
Meanwhile, Palm is sitting on quite a few of it’s own patents in mobile technology. You can expect Palm to keep a watchful eye on this whole ordeal and perhaps jump into the fray themselves with a suit, if deemed necessary of course. We can only suspect that Apple hasn’t sued Palm because technically, Apple has infrined on a few of Palm’s patents – either that or Apple does not feel Palm is a big threat, which is a bad theory.
Now I am just waiting for
