You may have heard about the recent fuss all over the web about Apple filing a law suit against HTC, alleging that the company is infringing 20 patents “related to the iPhone’s user interface, underlying architecture, and hardware”. The patents are fairly dull and lifeless, nothing exciting really. Most of them were granted in the past year, but overall they span a range from 1995 to as recent as February 2 2010.
Apple are looking to take pretty much every HTC phone off the shelves, including the Nexus One, and what do the majority of HTC phones run? Well Android of course, and who makes Android? Why Google!
According to the lawsuit, Apple wants the HTC phones taken off the shelves and they want “Financial” compensation as well. Why wouldn’t they just be happy enough to set up some licensing agreement like most companies do and collect royalties?
Google and Apple really aren’t getting on to well with each other lately. Firstly a while back Google CEO Eric Schmidt was kicked off the board of directors at Apple because Google were beginning to infringe on Apples territory.We’ve heard that Microsoft might be taking over as the default search engine from Google on the iPhone and Google recently brought out their Nexus One which was meant to compete with the iPhone, while it may not have made a significant impact it was certainly sending a message to Apple. Google also have their Chrome OS coming out sometime soon and while it may be more a hit at Microsoft it will still undoubtedly affect Apple as well.
Apple are not only trying to protect their own software from companies, but also their hardware and sales. They know that Google is rapidly growing all the time and can tell that they are a serious threat. Google are a huge company with a lot of man power and do or will do just about everything Apple do and more, short of making their own hardware.
Google also have huge horsepower when it comes to defending themselves in court cases, and while this lawsuit may be directly towards HTC, I’ve no doubt Google will have some input into the whole thing.
Source:Engadget
And just on another note, HTC recently posted a job listing on their site looking for somebody who knows a thing or two about patents
