Links 11 Nov: Apple Settles With HTC. But Why? - Forbes

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Apple has settled all its outstanding patent disputes with HTC. The formal announcement is here at the Apple site.

“HTC is pleased to have resolved its dispute with Apple, so HTC can focus on innovation instead of litigation,” said Peter Chou, CEO of HTC.

“We are glad to have reached a settlement with HTC,” said Tim Cook, CEO of Apple. “We will continue to stay laser focused on product innovation.”

It’s been a long road to get this far:

To refresh your memory, this particular saga begin back on March 2nd, 2010, when Apple filed lawsuits with the International Trade Commission and US District Court. That initial filing covered 20 patents related to iOS, which it accused HTC of infringing upon, and since then it has only been an ever-expanding battle.

Some speculation as to why settle?

HTC is a much smaller target, and struggling to find a path forward in a market dominated by Apple and Samsung. At some point it’s not worth it for Apple to fight a battle against an opponent that’s falling behind in the marketplace anyway.
On the flip side, HTC probably thinks it’s a better use of money to simply pay Apple and move on, rather than paying lawyers indefinitely. Apple has the money to keep this case going forever, but HTC has much bigger priorities.

With HTC going Windows Phone as well, there’s less to fight about. But the idea that Apple settled because it just didn’t care about a company that’s not a threat is intriguing. For it’s a statement that patents are being used as a competitive threat, not purely to preserve IP.

Or it could just be that the battle wasn’t going all Apple’s way and it was better just to settle:

The two companies were ordered by a Delaware court in May to begin discussing a potential settlement, but as early as September HTC was threatening to have the LTE iPhone and iPads banned for sale in the U.S., based on patents it holds regarding LTE technology. Meanwhile, Apple is said to have spent around $100 million on its efforts to get the import ban on HTC phones put in place, only to have it side-stepped via a relatively minor software change.

Apple also experienced a reversal in the U.K. in July, when that body ruled that HTC had not infringed four of its key patents, related to gesture-based unlocking, multitouch interfaces, multilingual keyboards and bounce-back transition animations. In other words, Apple was not seeing many definitive victories in its ongoing actions against HTC and was reportedly spending a lot on its efforts.

I somehow doubt we’ll be seeing a similar Apple/Samsung settlement any time soon.

In other patent news Apple seems to have lost some of the preliminary skirmishing in another suit:

You might think it’s obvious that when an iPhone or similar device is placed on its side, what’s displayed on the screen should rotate as well.

But CNET has learned that a federal judge in Delaware yesterday rejected Apple’s attempt to throw out a lawsuit over screen rotation brought by a holding company, MobileMedia Ideas, which has been dubbed “a classic patent troll.”

U.S. District Judge Sue Robinson said the suit could proceed, ruling that the question of whether iOS devices infringed on the patent, No. 6,441,828, was “suitable for determination by a jury.”

How about he who lives by the patent suit will die by the patent suit? No? Perhaps just will get bored and exhausted by patent suits?