HTC slaps back at Apple patent slap
'I'll see your tit and raise you a tat'
HTC has fought back against Apple's patent suit with - you guessed it - a patent suit.
"We are taking this action against Apple to protect our intellectual property, our industry partners, and most importantly our customers that use HTC phones," Jason Mackenzie, the company's VP for North America, said on Wednesday in a prepared statement.
Mackenzie's words were less feisty than those of Steve Jobs, who when Apple sued HTC issued a statement that said, in part: "We think competition is healthy, but competitors should create their own original technology, not steal ours."
If you're keeping score, Apple is suing HTC for infringement of 20 patents relating to the iPhone's UI, architecture, and hardware. HTC is now suing Apple for infringement of five of its patents, but it didn't say exactly which ones or what they cover.
HTC's action wasn't unexpected. After Apple filed suit against it this March, HTC said that it would "fully defend" itself and its interests. And as is becoming readily apparent, in matters of patent infringement, the best defense is a good offense.
Witness, for example, the Apple-Nokia patent spat. Nokia first sued Apple last October. Apple countersued Nokia in December. Later that month, Nokia ratcheted up its anti-Apple suit by adding more patents to its list and claiming that "virtually all" of Cupertino's products violated some Finoovian patent.
A US judge told both Apple and Nokia to chill in March, but Nokia was having none of it, adding another suit to its list of complaints just last week.
We wouldn't be surprised if the Apple-HTC spat takes somewhat the same course. ®
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COMMENTS
Hmmm...
... isn't the entire justification behind the state endorsing a monopoly on behalf of an "inventor" that it somehow works out better for the public in the end? If so, how does this endless acrimony over utterly obvious "inventions" help?
I propose a new way of quantifying "obvious" for patents. If, when presented with the "problem" an invention purports to solve a small group of perfectly average 10 year olds can come up with the same "solution" the patent is thrown out. e.g.
Problem: Users can only move one thing around on the screen at a time
Kids: Just make it so they can move more than one thing at a time
Result: Goodbye to Apple's ludicrous multitouch patent
Problem: All the bits of a car don't talk to each other
Kids: Can't you put them all on a network like phones and computers and stuff
Result: Goodbye Microsoft's staggeringly stupid in car networking patent
It's said that when there's no more room in Hell...
....the lawyers will walk the Earth.
And the winners are.....
The Lawyers.....this really does just show that the patent system is broken.
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