Last Friday, HTC was dealt a massive blow when the US International Trade Commission (ITC) took Apple’s side and found the Taiwanese phonemaker guilty of infringing two iPhone patents. But HTC’s CEO is not taking the decision lying down and says he is prepared to fight back, using new acquisition S3 Graphics to help.
Speaking to the BBC, HTC premiere Peter Chou said his firm would win its appeal of the decision and go after Apple with patents of its own, or rather S3’s own.
S3 Graphics, part-owned by HTC’s co-founder and chairwoman Cher Wang has a wealth of patents, some 235 to be precise, including two that the ICT has ruled Apple has infringed upon. This gives HTC some great leverage.
But chief executive Peter Chou has said HTC would win the appeal, and threatens Apple with a raft of patents that HTC recently acquired with S3 Graphics.
“We have enough patents to make a stand,” Chou told the BBC adding he was confident his firm had a strong enough case to overturn last Friday’s ruling made by just one judge.
The ITC’s senior staff attorney, claimed Chou, had even contradicted the judge’s opinion and said that HTC had not infringed Apple’s patents.
For HTC, which saw its shares drop 7% on the back of the ICT ruling last week, any attempt to reverse the decision would be worthwhile and Chou says the company is working on “multiple solutions” and workarounds.
Meanwhile, however, Chou is painting Apple as a bully which won’t let the rest of the ecosystem do what it does best; innovate. He offered the following parable:
“We all have been living in this village for a long time, making smartphones. But one day this powerful man came in and said I invented this world, this world is mine. I don’t think so. We have been making smartphones before the iPhone. This world belongs to all and nobody has a right to ask other people to leave. ”
Chou said there was room for more than just one big player in the smartphone market and that “Nobody should tell other people to leave.
“let consumers decide… rather than in court,” he went on.
Chou, whose firm sold $1.55 billion worth of phones in the last quarter alone, concluded “we don’t want to copy anyone, we want to be a premium product.”
