Brace yourself for more mobile patent news, folks, because it's been revealed that HTC has filed a countersuit against Apple here in the U.S. The case in question actually began in 2010 when Motorola sued Apple, and then that battle was consolidated with another, leaving a case in which Apple brought six claims against HTC. Now HTC has responded by claiming that Apple is infringing upon two patents that it gained from HP late last year. According to FOSS Patents, these are the patents that HTC is asserting against Apple:

• Patent No. 7,571,221, which involves "installation of network services in an embedded network server." HTC says that the Apple products infringing upon this patent include (but aren't limited to) computers like the MacBook Pro and MacBook Air as well as mobile devices like the iPhone (all models), iPod touch and iPad (all models).
• Patent No. 7,120,684, which relates to a "method and system for central management of a computer network." The items that HTC says violate this patent are Apple's Remote Desktop and Profile Manager as well as products and services that use them.

There's been quite a bit of Apple and HTC-related legal headlines as of late (who hasn't been involved in some sort of legal battle, right?), including HTC being cleared of patent infringement in a case over in the U.K. and Apple filing an ITC complaint against 29 HTC devices. The ITC also recently prevented HTC from using five patents that it gained from Google against Apple. Taking that into consideration, I'm betting that HTC feels confident that these two HP patents will be able to be used in its new counterclaim. Now we just have to wait and see how Apple responds to this latest bit of litigation.

Via FOSS Patents