14 DAY TRIAL // Cupertino-based company Apple reportedly filed a new patent infringement lawsuit against Taiwanese mobile phone maker HTC Corporation. According to Apple, HTC infringes some more of its patents related to the user interface on its mobile devices. The suit was filed with the Delaware Court, the same as the first law suit filed in March 2010.
According to the court documents, there are four Apple patents that HTC allegedly infringes with its mobile phones. However, it seems that two of these patents were mentioned in the first lawsuit too, and that they have been included in the new filling due to some minor corrections that had to be made by the USPTO. The other two patents mentioned in the suit are new to the cause.
These two Apple patents HTC allegedly infringes include: - patent 6,282,646: “System for real-time adaptation to changes in display configuration” by Hendry et. al. and assigned to Apple Computer, Inc. (Granted 8/28/2001) - patent 7,380,116: “System for real-time adaptation to changes in display configuration” by Hendry et. al. and assigned to Apple Inc. (Granted 5/27/2008)
As the name suggests, these two patents are almost the same, though the second one is seen more as a continuation of the first one. As stated above, the new lawsuit has been filed with the Delaware District Court, yet there is no information available on whether this is a continuation of the first suit or a new one. It seems that a judge has not yet been assigned, a recent article on techcrunch reads.
The legal dispute between Apple and HTC has certainly been brought to a new level. Following Apple's initial filing, which mentioned only HTC devices running under Google's Android operating system, HTC responded with a complaint to ITC, alleging patent infringement and asking for the imports of iPhones, iPods and iPads to be banned from the United States. A few weeks ago, ITC said it would investigate Apple, and the new suit might be a response to that.