The United States International Trade Commission has said that it will review a ruling that declared Taiwanese smartphone maker HTC had infringed two Apple patents, a decision that could possibly lead to the banning of HTC’s Android smartphones in the US, Bloomberg has revealed.
Posting to the ITC website, the commission filed a “Notice of commission determination to review in part a final initial determination find a violation of Section 337”, a ruling that has the potential to ban both the import and sales of products deemed to be infringing intellectual property of another entity (in this case Apple).
Apple had previously won a lawsuit against HTC, which was found to have infringed two of the Cuperinto-based company’s patents covering data transmission and the identification of phone numbers, technologies that are utilised by Google’s Android operating system on HTC’s smartphones.
The ITC will now review four patents, two that HTC had previously been found to infringe, and two additional patents that cover the programming of HTC’s operating system on its devices.
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HTC told Bloomberg it welcomed the decision to review the case, noting that “we are confident in our case,” said Adam Emery, HTC’s spokesman.
The review will take into consideration patents that Apple previously accused Nokia of infringing, before Apple and the Finnish mobile giant agreed to a licensing agreement.
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