Judge Finds Apple Violating HTC's New Patents
Dailytech Reports: Apple will have to pay up -- or negotiate a settlement
Apple, Inc. (AAPL) has put Taiwan's HTC Corp. (SEO:066570) in a very bad spot. The larger, more profitable gadget maker has hit HTC with a series of lawsuits worldwide, and recent scored a favorable preliminary ruling, which could lead to a complete ban on HTC handsets in the U.S.
But HTC appears to have some leverage, now. In an unsealed ruling dating back to July 1, it has been declared that Apple infringed on intellectual property of recent HTC acquisition S3 Graphics.
The IP in question covers image compression techniques in software and hardware. The U.S. International Trade Commission Judge James Gildea ruled that while Apple's popular iPad, iPhone, and iPod lines of mobile gadgets are not in violation of the IP, some of Apple's Mac OS X computers are.
As NVIDIA Corp. (NVDA) is a licensee, units with its GPUs are not in violation. However, models with graphics by Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) or integrated graphics from Intel Corp.'s (INTC) (such as the newly refreshed MacBook Air lineup) are in violation.
The ruling thus clears the way for a partial ban on the import of Macs. As virtually all Macs are...
from: http://techdesk.info/post.php?post_id=242
Interesting.........The tides have turned.