HTC has scored a major win in the UK in their ongoing legal battles with Apple, as the UK High Court of Justice’s Chancery Division has ruled that HTC smartphones do not infringe on any of the four EU patents that Apple had brought to court. These patents include slide-to-unlock, multi touch, handling of foreign language text input, and a photo management patent.
Judge Christopher Floyd, who presides over the case, also struck a major blow to Apple by ruling that three of the four mentioned patents are invalid in the UK. The slide-to-unlock patent, #2964022, was declared invalid due to its similarity to the unlocking mechanism found on the Neonode N1, a Swedish touchscreen phone launched well before the iPhone. The multi-touch patent, #2098948, was invalidated as multi-touch is deemed to a computer program and hence cannot be patented under UK law. Lastly, patent #1168859, which covers the way a phone handles switching between foreign-language characters was found to be too similar to other systems and not considered very “novel”. Judge Floyd also ruled that the implementation of the patent is an obvious extension of prior work. The photo management patent, while valid, was not found to be infringed on by HTC’s devices.
This is a substantial victory for HTC at least in the UK as they won’t have any problems selling their smartphones now that the court has ruled that they do not infringe on any of Apple’s patents (rather, on the photo management patent as the others were deemed invalid). Here’s hoping the legal systems in other nations such as the US make the same sensible decisions in the ongoing legal battles between Apple and the rest of the Android manufacturers. Apple’s patent trolling has gone on for too long.