14 DAY TRIAL // Cupertino-based Apple seems set to take on everybody when it comes to the iPhone-like features present on today's handsets on the market. The company already sued Finnish handset vendor Nokia, the leading company in the mobile-phone space, and now it has gone after the Taiwan-based smartphone maker HTC Corporation, with a complaint made at the International Trade Commission (ITC), and with a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Delaware.
“Apple reinvented the mobile phone in 2007 with its revolutionary iPhone,” the company states, claiming that HTC's devices are infringing 20 Apple patents that are related to the user interface on the iPhone, as well as to the handset's underlying architecture and hardware. However, the company does not state specifically which patents have been infringed, nor does it point towards specific devices from HTC that include technology patented by Apple.
Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO, commented on the newly filed patent-infringement lawsuit, stating that it decided it should go after the competitors that stole inventions Apple had already patented. At the same time, he is cited in the press release announcing the lawsuit saying that Apple's competitors “should create their own original technology, not steal ours.”
For what it's worth, these are about the same words we heard back in December, when Apple decided to countersue Nokia for patent infringement, after being sued by the Espoo, Finland-based maker for the alleged infringement of essential patents in wireless communications. Moreover, Apple went after Nokia at that time for “stealing” user-interface ideas from the company's iPhone, and now HTC gets sued for the same reason.
It should also be noted that, while the Nokia-Apple battle started with lawsuit filings and was brought in front of ITC only later, Apple chose to walk both roads at the same time with the complaint against HTC. The International Trade Commission already announced that it would scrutinize both Apple and Nokia following the patent-infringement complaints, and it remains to be seen what it will decide regarding HTC.