ITC rules in Apple's favour; HTC not concerned

Apple initially filed a suit against HTC accusing the Taiwanese phone manufacturer of infringing 10 patents. In July, an administrative law judge at the commission ruled that HTC had infringed two of Apple's patents - 263 and 647. On Monday the ITC reversed the decision on the 263 patent and ruled that the 647 patent had been partially infringed on HTC phones running on Android 1.6 to 2.2.

The 647 patent related to technology that allows users to click on phone numbers and other types of data in a document, such as an email, to either dial directly or to hyperlink to the web.

In a media statement, HTC said, "We are very pleased with the determination and we respect it. However, the ‘647 patent is a small UI experience and HTC will completely remove it from all of our phones soon."

Analysts questioned by Forbes, Reuters and ZDNet all agreed that the ruling represented a narrow win for Apple and wouldn't affect HTC's sales at all.

"As the ban does not take effect till April 19, the ITC has given HTC and US carriers ample time to work around the limited violation," Bernstein Research analyst Pierre Ferragu told Forbes. He added that HTC has had a work around for several months and is ready to ship and the whole affair was "much ado about nothing". 

Nevertheless, HTC isn't quite out of the woods yet going into 2012. Its sales have slumped, the manufacturer has had to slash sales forecasts and is still facing legal patent battles in Germany. While the ruling will not directly affect sales, HTC may not get off scott free in terms of perception.

"I have a negative and bearish view (on HTC)," Yuanta Securities analyst, Bonnie Chang told Reuters. "I expect its first quarter will still not be good because US phone operators will worry about the injunction and will not pull in inventory until HTC's new models are approved."

Gizmodo also pointed out that while HTC may be relatively unaffected, the ruling may affect the Android OS itself and may give Apple grounds to bring other Android phone makers to court.