Cher Wang, HTC chairwoman, said her company won’t settle its mobile device patent lawsuit with Apple despite the fact that a jury just hit Samsung with a US$1 billion in damages for infringing on the iPhone’s design.
HTC: We won’t settle with Apple
“Samsung’s defeat does not mean that Google Inc’s Android camp is defeated,” she told reporters, according to Taipei Times.
Much like its legal fight with Samsung, Apple has squared off in the U.S. against HTC over claims the company’s smartphones infringe on iPhone and iPad-related patents. HTC filed its own counter suit alleging Apple’s devices infringe on its patents.
HTC’s strong stance follows Samsung’s big loss to Apple, and its own headaches after Apple won a preliminary injunction late last year blocking the sale of some of its smartphones for infringing on a data detection patent. Earlier in the year, the U.S. International Trade Commission also ruled that HTC’s Android-based smartphones infringed on Apple patents covering certain types of data transmissions, and a system for performing certain actions on structure in a computer.
That injunction hasn’t stopped HTC from selling its Android-based smartphones in the U.S. because the company released software updates removing or altering the functions it was said to infringe on.
HTC has only two patents left in its complaint after the ITC rejected some and it withdrew others. The next hearing with the ITC is scheduled for November 7 where Apple and HTC are expecting to hear an initial ruling on their cases.