The smartphone war is being waged on many fronts. Of course there’s the never-ending price war and battle for customers at the retail or carrier level, but smartphone makers are treading just as deep into the legal department. Patent disputes abound in the wireless space and the more successful a company is, the more likely it is to be on the receiving end of a wide-reaching patent dispute.
Enter Apple Inc. (AAPL) and HTC Corp. On Friday, Apple gained the upper hand against HTC in a preliminary ruling made by the U.S. International Trade Commission.
The ITC ruled that HTC infringed on two of the four patents Apple lays claim to and HTC shares have fallen at least 6.5% in response. The patents deal with multimedia processing and data detection technologies. HTC, which originally caught Apple’s eye for alleged infringement on 10 of its patents, says it will appeal the ruling.
