HTC Ordered To Stop Selling One Mini In The U.K. Following Nokia Injunction

HTC-One-mini-banned

The HTC One mini, the smaller and cheaper version of HTC’s flagship smartphone, has been banned in the United Kingdom after Nokia won a patent infringement injunction against the device. HTC must cease selling the device on Friday, December 6.

HTC actually lost the case against Nokia back in October after the U.K. High Court found that the One mini infringed the EP0998024 patent owned by Nokia which protects a “modular structure for a transmitter and a mobile station.” However, the judge gave HTC time to appeal the decision before blocking sales of the device.

Today HTC was unsuccessful in that appeal, and now the One mini is set to be banned in the U.K., causing “considerable damage” to HTC, Judge Richard Arnold said in his ruling. But that’s not the end of it for HTC; Nokia is also seeking “financial compensation for the infringement of this patent,” the Finnish firm said in a statement.

HTC tried to argue that the component was so small it did not justify a sales ban, and that the One mini was not a competitor to Nokia because it runs Google’s Android operating system, while Nokia’s devices are powered by the Windows Phone platform. Unsurprisingly, Nokia disagreed — and so did the court.

According to the judgement, HTC sold about 750,000 smartphones worth around £221 million ($363 million) in the U.K. between January and September. That’s a remarkably small number when you think about it — especially when you compare those figures to sales of the Galaxy S4 and the iPhone 5s all by themselves.