Looks like a good day all round in Europe today.
Apple has been defeated at the High Court by the Taiwanese smartphone maker HTC over a series of patent infringement claims, including around the iPhone’s "prize" slide-to-unlock patent.
Quote:
The case brought the smartphone industry’s bitter international patent wars to British shores and is likely to have an impact on ongoing disputes in Germany and the United States.
Mr Justice Floyd dealt Apple an almost total defeat in the case, which concerned four iPhone patents.
Along with the slide-to-unlock mechanism, HTC challenged Apple’s patents on the iPhone’s groundbreaking multi-touch system. Both are “prize” patents in the American giant’s portfolio, according to intellectual property experts.
The other patents in the case related to the way the iPhone manages photographs, and the use of different character sets in text messaging; a patent dating back to 1994.
A HTC spokesman welcomed the High Court’s ruling, which said that parts of the slide-to-unlock patented were too “obvious” or foreshadowed by earlier patents. The multi-touch patent was also found to be partly invalid because it was too obvious, and Mr Justice Floyd said HTC’s smartphones did not infringe what remained.
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