Apple And HTC Form Patent Truce

In a surprise turn of events, Apple and HTC have decided to end all ongoing patent disputes in favor of a 10-year licensing agreement. This is the exact kind of resolution courts around the globe have been hoping for from Apple and in fact, have begged for from Apple and Samsung. While there appears to be no such truce in store for Samsung and Apple, this latest bit of news at least shows hope of Apple scaling back on its patent crusade.

While the specifics of the agreement remain confidential, it appears they were financially beneficial as HTC has commented on the fact that the resolution “will not have any adverse material impact on the financials of the company.” That’s good news, meaning HTC didn’t have to sacrifice its first born in order to continue its use of the features in question.

Both companies seem to agree that innovation is better than litigation and we’re hoping this change of strategy by Apple is a sign of things to come.

HTC chief executive Peter Chou says that “HTC is pleased to have resolved its dispute with Apple, so HTC can focus on innovation instead of litigation.” Apple CEO Tim Cook says “we are glad to have reached a settlement with HTC,” and that “we will continue to stay laser focused on product innovation.”

Via – The Verge

UK Appeals Court Orders Apple To Pay Samsung’s Legal Fees

The ongoing immaturity between Apple and Samsung has managed to infuriate just about every judge under the sun. More recently, a UK Court was less than happy with the way Apple decided to mock the courts by adding unrelated and contradictory wording to statements they were ordered to display in print and on their UK website after a ruling was made that Samsung had not infringed on Apple’s design.

The statements were meant to humiliate Apple by having them publicly announce the courts ruling that Samsung did not copy Apple’s design. Instead, Apple buried this statement among confusing and contradictory statements of judges claiming that Apple was “cooler” than Samsung and that a U.S. jury ruled Samsung had copied.

The UK Court of Appeals was not amused and quickly ordered Apple to correct the statements — giving them just 48 hours to do so.

If Apple thought that was going to be the end of their reprimand for non-compliance, they were wrong. The UK Court of Appeals later went on to order Apple to pay for the majority of Samsung’s legal fees.

As to the costs (lawyers’ fees) to be awarded against Apple, we concluded that they should be on an indemnity basis. Such a basis (which is higher than the normal, “standard” basis) can be awarded as a mark of the court’s disapproval of a party’s conduct, particularly in relation to its respect for an order of the court. Apple’s conduct warranted such an order.

I’m pretty sure Apple won’t break a sweat over having to pay Samsung’s legal fees, but they should start sweating over the snowball effect all this litigation is having on their company image as well as business partnerships.

Source – England and Wales Court of Appeal (Civil Division) Decisions

Verizon Outs The HTC Droid DNA

We’ve been hearing about the HTC DROID DNA for the past week and fully expect Verizon to unveil it at their NYC event tomorrow morning. However, Verizon has officially outed its existence via their Google+ page.

Verizon is planning to hold a special unboxing of the device on November 19th in conjunction with PhoneDog and has even set up a public Google+ hangout for all to join. We’re not sure how exciting an unboxing is going to be a week after every major news outlet paparazzis the thing to death.

Either way, the fact that Verizon outlines the 19th unboxing as being pre-release, means the DROID DNA won’t be hitting shelves until sometime thereafter. This means you Verizon customers hoping to score the HTC DROID DNA will have to at least wait another week or two.

Source – Google+