ITC Bans Import of HTC Android Devices in Apple Patent Fight

The International Trade Commission (ITC) on Monday ruled in favor of Apple in its patent battle against HTC, ordering an import ban on certain HTC devices starting April 19, 2012.

HTC will be allowed to import refurbished devices with the infringing patent until Dec. 19, 2013 for replacement purposes, but the company cannot refer to new devices as refurbished, the ITC said in its ruling.

As patent blogger Florian Mueller explained in a blog post, Apple's victory is a "narrow" one. The ban applies to Android-based devices that include a "data tapping patent." One example of this technology is a phone number within an email that you can tap to bring up the phone dialer and place a call automatically.

"If Google can implement this popular feature, which users of modern-day smartphones really expect, without infringing on the two patent claims found infringed, this import ban won't have any effect whatsoever," Mueller wrote. "Otherwise HTC will have to remove this feature, which would put HTC at a competitive disadvantage as compared to other smartphone makers, including other Android device makers."

Mueller noted that the ITC found that HTC does not infringe on a "much broader and potentially more impactful patent on realtime signal processing." That, he said, "could have had much more impact on HTC and, more generally, Android than the data tapping patent."

In a statement, an HTC spokesman said the company was "gratified" that the ITC did not rule in favor of Apple on all the patents in question and pledged to alter the infringing technology.

"We are very pleased with the determination and we respect it. However, the [data tapping] patent is a small UI experience and HTC will completely remove it from all of our phones soon."

Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In July, an ITC judge found that HTC infringed on two of 10 Apple patents. HTC and Apple both requested reviews in that decision, prolonging the process.

"Apple would have preferred for the Commission to adopt the [administrative law judge's] recommendation, but in the event that a review would take place (as it did), Apple also wanted to raise some questions of its own and asked for another look at the two patents the ALJ did not deem infringed," Mueller wrote today. "But as I expected, the review focused on the two patents the ALJ deemed infringed."

Regardless, the ITC ruling is "progress" for Apple, Mueller said. If Cupertino can challenge handset makers on other data-tapping-esque patents, it could "really have competitive impact with its many litigations targeting Android," Mueller concluded.

In addition to the ITC, Apple and HTC are also battling over patents in several courts throughout the world.

Today's decision was twice-delayed. The D.C-based ITC was first scheduled to rule on Dec. 6, but that got pushed to Dec 14 and then today.

Earlier this month, PCMag mobile analyst Sascha Segan suggested that an Apple win is also a victory for Microsoft. For more, see An HTC Android Ban is Microsoft's Dream.

Today's ruling comes several weeks after the ITC ruled that Apple's products don't infringe on patents held by S3 Graphics, a company in the process of being acquired by HTC.

Editor's Note: This story was updated at 6:20pm Eastern with a revised statement from HTC.

For more from Chloe, follow her on Twitter @ChloeAlbanesius.