There’s an unfortunate tendency among hardware manufacturers of all kinds to jealously guard their new products from prying eyes. Such is the case with the HTC One S, which was included in HTC-Hub’s unboxing of the HTC One X. Both devices are due to go on sale in Europe in just a few hours, but that didn’t stop the Taiwanese company from taking some major offense at the French site’s actions. They’ve initiated a civil suit against HTC-Hub, even though both the X and the S were leaked weeks before their Mobile World Congress unveiling. HTC France has appointed a bailiff to recover the One S phone that the site had planned to review.

There’s some confusion over HTC and its PR agency’s reasoning for the suit. HTC-Hub says that it wasn’t scheduled to get review units for another week at least, so the delicate dance of the non-disclosure agreement doesn’t apply. We’re not strangers to NDAs here: the basic gist is that if you obtain news from a source outside the company itself, it’s fair game. HTC-Hub isn’t saying where it got the One X and One S phones, but they didn’t get them from HTC. That being the case, HTC shouldn’t be able to seize the phone unless it can prove that it was obtained illegally.

This sort of behavior is unfortunately common in the tech space. It’s even more disheartening to see swift and unconsidered legal action taken against HTC’s most loyal fans – these are the guys that get the most excited about the HTC brand, and act as unpaid evangelists for HTC’s new hardware. The fact that HTC France is making a stink about this just days before the phones were set to be available to the public puts a bad taste in our mouths. We’ll be keeping a close eye on the case.

[device id=2316] [via HTC-Hub]