Apple Gets Litigious, Sues HTC

Today, Apple filed a massive copyright infringement lawsuit against rival smartphone manufacturer HTC and has requested that all HTC phones be pulled from sale in America. In its suit, Apple has cited almost every model that HTC makes.

Among the smartphones named are the Nexus One, Touch Pro, Touch Diamond, Touch Pro2, Tilt II, Pure, Imagio, Dream, myTouch 3G, Hero, HD2, and Droid Eris.

Apple alleges that its following patents have been violated:
- No. 7,362,331: “Time-Based, Non-Constant Translation Of User Interface Objects Between States”
- No. 7,479,949: “Touch Screen Device, Method, And Graphical User Interface For Determining Commands By Applying Heuristics”
- No. 7,657,849: “Unlocking A Device By Performing Gestures On An Unlock Image”
- No. 7,469,381: “List Scrolling And Document Translation, Scaling, And Rotation On A Touch-Screen Display”
- No. 5,920,726: “System And Method For Managing Power Conditions Within A Digital Camera Device”
- No. 7,633,076: “Automated Response To And Sensing Of User Activity In Portable Devices”
- No. 5,848,105: “GMSK Signal Processors For Improved Communications Capacity And Quality”
- No. 7,383,453: “Conserving Power By Reducing Voltage Supplied To An Instruction-Processing Portion Of A Processor”
- No. 5,455,599: “Object-Oriented Graphic System”
- No. 6,424,354: “Object-Oriented Event Notification System With Listener Registration Of Both Interests And Methods”
- No. 5,481,721: “Method For Providing Automatic And Dynamic Translation Of Object Oriented Programming Language-Based Message Passing Into Operating System Message Passing Using Proxy Objects”
- No. 5,519,867: “Object-Oriented Multitasking System”
- No. 5,566,337: “Method And Apparatus For Distributing Events In An Operating System”
- No. 5,929,852: “Encapsulated Network Entity Reference Of A Network Component System”
- No. 5,946,647: “System And Method For Performing An Action On A Structure In Computer-Generated Data”
- No. 5,969,705: “Message Protocol For Controlling A User Interface From An Inactive Application Program”
- No. 6,275,983: “Object-Oriented Operating System”
- No. 6,343,263: “Real-Time Signal Processing System For Serially Transmitted Data”
- No. 5,915,131: “Method And Apparatus For Handling I/O Requests Utilizing Separate Programming Interfaces To Access Separate I/O Service”
- No. RE39,486: “Extensible, Replaceable Network Component System”

Steve Jobs stated:

We can sit by and watch competitors steal our patented inventions, or we can do something about it. We’ve decided to do something about it. We think competition is healthy, but competitors should create their own original technology, not steal ours.

HTC obviously does not agree but has not responded legally yet. Copyright law has always been extremely tricky business. Many patents seem to be granted on overly broad ideas and concepts. I will leave it to lawyers to opine on this topic.