LOS ANGELES — Apple Inc. has persuaded federal
authorities to ban U.S. sales of some Google-powered Android phones that
unlawfully use iPhone-like features.
But don’t expect the more than 500 varieties of Android smartphones and tablets to disappear from shelves any time soon.
The ruling this week from the U.S. International
Trade Commission was one of the more anticipated developments in Apple’s
global legal battle with major Android manufacturers such as Samsung
Electronics, Motorola Mobility and HTC Corp.
In dozens of lawsuits around the world, Apple is
determined to prevent rivals from selling phones that it has said
“slavishly” copied features from its blockbuster iPhone. The suits cover
many of the sophisticated technologies that make a phone function,
including crucial mechanisms that control how devices send and receive
data as well as simpler software features that display smiley-face
emoticons on the screen.
This time around, some legal observers said Apple’s
victory covered a technology that was closer to the smiley-face side of
the spectrum.
The trade commission ruled that Taiwanese phone maker
HTC was infringing a single, 15-year-old Apple patent that governs the
way phone numbers and addresses are displayed in email messages. On the
iPhone and some Android devices, when an email contains a phone number
you can tap the number to automatically initiate a call.
“I don’t see this is a big deal,” said Bijal V.
Vakil, an intellectual property attorney at White & Case. “It’s
going to make Apple feel better,” he said, but “it’s just one
independent case.”
HTC also expressed a lack of concern about the
ruling, saying that the email feature was a small part of the user
experience and that it would remove the function from its phones by the
trade commission’s deadline in April.
Though the iPhone is Apple’s most popular and
profitable product, the company has watched as Google-powered phones
have rapidly taken over the smartphone market, doubling to nearly 53
percent of devices sold during the last quarter from about 25 percent a
year earlier, according to research firm Gartner Inc. The iPhone has
held steady at about 15 percent of phones sold each quarter.
The trade commission case involved 10 patents, but officials granted Apple a victory on only one.
Observers agreed that Apple missed a chance to land a
knockdown blow against Android rivals when commission officials
rejected its claim on a broader patent controlling the way that
smartphones process and transmit data, a fundamental process in mobile
phones. The ability to bar competitors from using that technology could
have meant major limitations for Android handsets — and second thoughts
for potential buyers.
Florian Mueller, a patent specialist and consultant
who has been following the disputes closely, said if Apple had prevailed
on the broader data-processing patent, HTC’s phone redesign “would be
like having to take an entire floor out of your house and completely
replace it — that would be hard to do without the house crashing down.”
But the minor email patent that Apple won, he said,
extending the home improvement analogy, “is more like if you just had to
replace your TV.”
Still, many lawsuits remain, Mueller noted, including
several in Germany and the U.S. that are likely to advance in January.
And it won’t take many victories for Apple, he said, before Android
phones begin to shed enough features to look watered-down.
“It’s not like you can win on a single patent like
this and force people out of the market,” Mueller said. “But with a
whole team of such patents, certainly that could be meaningful from a
competitive point of view.”
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©2011 the Los Angeles Times
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