Back in December 2011 Apple won an ITC case against HTC where they sued the Taiwanese smartphone maker for infringing on several of their patents, four to be exact. The courts ruled that only one of those patents were infringed upon by HTC and elected to ban the importation of several devices. The ban wouldn’t be administered until April of this year, however, and Apple is not happy with that.
Apparently, Apple feels that the one violation found was not enough, and it wants the other alleged violations to reenter the conversation. That doesn’t come as too much of a surprise, as HTC was quick to call the one named violation a victory and claim that it has an easy workaround in store to avoid any sort of ban as a result of the violation.
Apple’s appeal seems to be aimed at expanding the scope of a specific “realtime API” patent that it is also asserting against href=”http://www.motorola.com/” rel=”homepage” target=”_blank” title=”Motorola”>Motorola, in addition to naming the original patents brought against HTC.
If Apple is successful in the appeals process, which could take a considerable amount of time, it may be more difficult for HTC to quickly turn around a solution to escape an import ban. Rest assured, this story is not yet over. [via FOSS Patents]
