Apple Ruling Hits Android

Do Apple own a patent for regular expressions?? It's implied that the feature HTC was forced to remove has to do with extracting numbers / urls etc. from bodies of text. Sounds a bit like regular expressions to me.

HTC has denied this "loss" is bad news for them.

Quoting: The U.S. International Trade Commission on Monday ordered HTC by April to stop importing handsets that infringe the patent.

Read more: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405297020479110457710...

Can they do that? Do they have the authority without a court order? Aren't courts supposed to be the deciding entities on patent issues?

Quoting: http://www.usitc.gov/press_room/gen_info.htm

The USITC is an independent, nonpartisan, quasi-judicial federal agency. Established by Congress in 1916 as the U.S. Tariff Commission (the Trade Act of 1974 changed its name to the U.S. International Trade Commission), the agency has broad investigative powers on matters of trade. The USITC is a national resource where trade data are gathered and analyzed. The data are provided to the President and Congress as part of the information on which U.S. trade policy is based.

I guess HTC are being smart about it. It is presents & gifts season and didn't want to miss such an opportunity wasting their time going to court with a challenge.

Keep it up Apple. Such shenanigans won't help on the long run.

Nonpartisan, ... my hiny.

Yes, it appears to have become a distinct feature of how American IT companies (and patent trolls) do business in the US (and it's spreading to Europe, too).

Trade injunctions hurt competitors hard where it matters right now, and it doesn't matter whether the patent or copyright infringement claim will (or is even likely to) stand up in court. So the issue is no longer what share the complainant is entitled to -- the defendant is locked out of that market. Instead of dealing with the question of how much of their revenue from that market should or will go to the complainant, it's become a question of how long it will be before they regain the ability to compete in that market, at all.

Arguably, when a company like Apple, or a troll like NTP, manages to get a trade injunction imposed against some competitor, they may even have strong motives to spin the litigation process out as long as possible, since the injunction may do far more damage to their competitors than a patent or copyright settlement.

Going by the comment section attached to the article, even the Wall Street Journal's readership sees these patents as trivial, old news (ie. pre-existing art), and yet another sign that the patent system (at least regarding software) is badly broken.

And THIS is where the weight of an outdated patent system is going to be felt. I get the impression that the US courts will tolerate this lawsuit nonsense for eternity. But when you start screwing with the consumer and what she wants, then it might start making a difference. I just hope HTC won't roll over like the rest of the manufacturers. Apple needs girl-slapped into reality.

I doubt that too, helios. Nobody stopped the illegal car warranty robo-calls a couple years ago, until they called a legislator's phone. That's what got them shut down, not the tens of thousands of complaints like mine that the FCC got.

Yep you have to buy, or tick off, a high ranking politico to get anything done any more ...

What I was try to suggest (admittedly rather obliquely) is that even "pro-business" folk are starting to sneer at the current US Patents situation.

I wonder how high up the hierarchy this understanding penetrates, and what it might signify in the longer term.

Buy a scale (like the "Lady justice" kind), and weigh the money from one side against the money from the other, ... and that's how to determine when things will change.