No matter what your point of view in this Apple vs. HTC patent infringement case, one thing’s for sure: The situation has gotten plenty of tongues wagging in the media world.
First up: HTC’s response to the suit. Rewind to a couple days ago — The Taiwanese company was likely ramping up for CTIA, which is due to hit the scene in a scant few weeks. (Look for PhoneDog’s upcoming coverage on the event.) Then wham! Suddenly the news breaks that Apple’s upset with the Android maker over 20 different patents.
Understandably, HTC could hardly comment at first. The company found out about this along with the rest of the blogosphere, via breaking news reports, so no wonder it wanted a little time to digest the situation. And now that it has, it seems like it’s getting ready for a fight. According to IntoMobile, the Taiwanese company says it does care about “patent rights and their enforcement, but is also committed to defending its own technology innovations.”
Does this mean HTC will take this fight head on and not settle out of court, like so many defendants do when battling a juggernaut? Well, what the company’s prepared to do exactly isn’t clear yet. But stay tuned. We’ll report as soon we know more.
The whole subject of patents can be a quagmire to wade through. On one hand, of course an organization, company or individual has the right to defend its intellectual property and all the resources and sweat equity involved in conceiving those ideas. But some argue that the concepts behind the patents in this case were vague or too general, at best. And that Apple’s maneuver was a transparent move (based on a flimsy argument) to attack a manufacturer — possibly turning HTC into collateral damage — in the bid to take out its real target: Google and the Android OS. Whether that's true or not, this whole episode may not be doing much good for Apple's image.
How all this will translate to consumer interests and finance was top of mind at FoxBusiness.com. The media company wanted to explore the possible consequences of the Apple-HTC case — so much so that they asked our very own Noah Kravitz for his take on the situation today.
If you follow any of the PhoneDog editors’ Twitter accounts, you probably already knew about this via our Tweets. But if you didn’t, check out the interview with “The Krav,” who weighs in on this case along with his other impressions of mobile tech at large.
EDIT: PD reader SeEsAw12 posted this YT vid in the comments of a previous post. It features Steve Jobs in an old interview. The content is quite interesting, given the hot subject these days, no?
