Apple wins US ruling banning HTC devices

Apple won a patent-infringement ruling that bans some HTC smartphones from the US starting next year, bolstering efforts to prove that devices running Google's Android operating system copy the iPhone. The US International Trade Commission, in a review of a judge's findings in July, said Monday that HTC is violating one Apple patent related to data-detection technology and issued a limited import exclusion order that takes effect on 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. "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." Article continues below Affected products 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 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 per cent 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 per cent 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 said increased 44 per cent 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 US smartphone seller in the third quarter. First victory 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.