(Updates with HTC closing price in ninth paragraph.)
Dec. 20 (Bloomberg) -- Apple Inc. won a patent-infringement ruling that bans some HTC Corp. smartphones from the U.S. starting next year, bolstering efforts to prove that devices running Google Inc.'s Android operating system copy the iPhone.
The U.S. International Trade Commission, in a review of a judge's findings in July, said yesterday that HTC is violating one Apple patent related to data-detection technology and issued a limited import exclusion order that takes effect April 19.
"HTC will completely remove it from all of our phones soon," Grace Lei, general counsel for Taoyuan, Taiwan-based HTC, said in an e-mail. The six-member commission determined that three other patents in the case weren't infringed.
While less than what Apple sought, the ruling gives the company its first victory in patent cases designed to slow the growth of Android, which former Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs claimed "ripped off the iPhone." Apple has one other case against HTC, as well as complaints against Samsung Electronics Co. and Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc., and is involved in more than a dozen other cases before the trade commission.
"The battle between Apple and Android is going to continue," said Peter Toren, a patent lawyer with Shulman Rogers in Potomac, Maryland, who has been watching the cases. "I'm not sure this decision, the way it is, is enough to push the parties to settlement. Apple doesn't have the leverage of a total exclusionary order."
Nexus One
The list of affected products and a full reason for the commission's decision, which is subject to appeal and a presidential review, wasn't immediately made public. Apple's original complaint named HTC's Nexus One, Touch Pro, Diamond, Tilt II, Dream, myTouch, Hero and Droid Eris.
Kristin Huguet, a spokeswoman for Cupertino, California- based Apple, declined to discuss the possibility of a settlement. She repeated the company's position that "competition is healthy, but competitors should create their own original technology."
Representatives from Google had no immediate comment.
HTC shares rose by the 7 percent daily limit to NT$476 in Taipei after the company said it will buy back 10 million of its own shares, equal to 1.16 percent of those outstanding.
The ruling is the first definitive decision in the dozens of patent cases that began to proliferate in 2010 as smartphone makers battle over a market that Strategy Analytics Inc. said increased 44 percent last quarter from a year earlier to 117 million phones worldwide. HTC, the second-largest maker of Android phones, used its partnership with Google to help transform itself from a contract manufacturer founded in 1997 to the biggest U.S. smartphone seller in the third quarter.
HTC Sales
HTC generated about $5 billion in U.S. sales last year, according to a separate patent complaint it filed at the trade agency against Apple. That's more than half of HTC's $9 billion (NT$275 billion) in global sales last year.
The commission's order applies to new phone imports and doesn't force HTC to pull existing devices off U.S. store shelves. The company can import refurbished phones to fulfill warranties or insurance contracts through Dec. 19, 2013.
"This exemption does not permit HTC to call new devices 'refurbished' and to import them as replacements," the commission said.
Apple's so-called '647 patent covered a feature in which the phone recognizes a telephone number so it can be stored in directories or called without dialing.
"The '647 patent is a small user interface experience," Lei said. The company is pleased with the commission's overall decision, and "we respect it."
IPhone 4s, Galaxy
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2011/12/19/bloomberg_articlesLWHO3007SXKX.DTL#ixzz1h3gTYsvg
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