Apple Inc. announced in a
press release this morning that they have filed an official lawsuit against HTC Corporation, one of the main distributors of Android and Windows Mobile devices.
According to Apple, HTC is infringing on as much as 20 of their patents "related to the iPhone's user interface, underlying architecture and hardware." The patents vary from the simple idea of an unlock screen to, more interestingly, the ability of a Object-Oriented System to multitask.
The list of infringements is fairly similar to the one Apple filed against Nokia last December, so while many see in this a direct attack at Google and the Android (HTC makes the Nexus One), it could be just some
more corporate hardball.
The only slight difference between the two cases is who took care of the official statement. Nokia only got Bruce Sewell, Apple's General Counsel and senior vice president, saying:
Other companies must compete with us by inventing their own technologies, not just by stealing ours
While for HTC, Steve Jobs apparently wrote the pitch himself:
We can sit by and watch competitors steal our patented inventions, or we can do something about it. We've decided to do something about it. We think competition is healthy, but competitors should create their own original technology, not steal ours.
Or did he?
Anyway, this most likely won't be going anywhere, as usual.
[via
Gizmodo]
