Taking a break from the usual Samsung versus Apple news you hear regularly, we turn our attention to yet another duo dishing it out in courts in Europe. While HTC won a very slight reprieve from getting its flagship banned in the UK, it failed to score a point in the German legal system, giving Nokia a chance to have its products banned once more.

Nokia has accused HTC of infringing on several of its patents in several judicial territories around the West. The most recent event saw Nokia victorious in the UK over several of its patents that was found in the HTC One and HTC One Mini. Luckily for HTC, the presiding judge granted a stay of injunction, allowing the Taiwanese manufacturer to temporarily continue sales of the HTC One and HTC One Mini, at least over the holiday season.

Things are not going in HTC’s favor in Germany, however. The case is about a Nokia patent that relates to what happens when a smartphone is connected to a computer via USB. Nokia’s patent describes how the necessary driver on a PC will be automatically loaded depending on whether the USB connection will be used for synchronization, tethering, or data transfer. This behavior can actually be seen in other Android devices as well, so it is still unknown whether this legal precedent will affect other manufacturers as well or even Android itself. The German court found that HTC was unable to sufficiently defend its infringement and thus awarded Nokia the victory.

That win is not clear cut, though. It seems that Nokia will still have to pay 40% of the court fees, which the Finnish company might be more than happy to fulfill considering its victory over HTC has more significant effects. However, apparently the reason why Nokia has to still cough up some dough is because the HTC One and its siblings, which represent the company’s most recent high-end lineup, have not been found to infringe on the said patent. The list of infringing devices has not been disclosed but, if this is true, then it leaves HTC in the clear to continue selling its flagship and making it through the holidays in Germany as well.

SOURCE: FOSS Patents

2 COMMENTS

  1. it doesn’t get much clearer than this, htc will have to settle and license nokia’s ip soon before nokia shut it down all over the world….maybe its time to look at some nokia shares? HTC is just the stepping stone to Samsung and Google. With Samsung’s 70m unit sale per quarter, even a 10$ royalty would net nokia 700m per quarter not bad! Nokia defeated Apple over ip in 2011, apple currently crushing the Korean copyist, nokia should be able to smash Samsung easily when the time comes?

  2. Why are you quoting Florian Meuller(Foss patents) It has been widely posted on the Web that he has the agenda of the competitors of Android. He posts with glee when any of the competition has a minor victory against any of the Android manufacturers. He has been linked as a paid blogger for Oracle, who are, guess it, trying to extort money from Google.

    All in my opinion of course

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