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Apple Reportedly Disrupting iPhone Competitors With Legal Threats Backed Up by HTC Suit

Fortune reports on a new research note from Oppenhiemer & Co.'s Yair Reiner claiming that Apple in January began high-level talks with major phone manufacturers expressing its displeasure with what it considers to be infringement of its iPhone-related intellectual property. According to the report, Apple's recent lawsuit against HTC has served to back up the company's position in these talks and has sent competitors scrambling to deal with the threat. Reiner writes:

Starting in January, Apple launched a series of C-Level discussions with tier-1 handset makers to underscore its growing displeasure at seeing its iPhone-related IP [intellectual property] infringed. The lawsuit filed against HTC thus appears to be Apple's way of putting a public, lawyered-up exclamation point on a series of blunt conversations that have been occurring behind closed doors.

Our checks also suggest that these warning shots are meaningfully disrupting the development roadmaps for would-be iPhone killers. Rival software and hardware teams are going back to the drawing board to look for work-arounds. Lawyers are redoubling efforts to gauge potential defensive and offensive responses. And strategy teams are working to chart OS strategies that are better hedged.

Fortune's report offers more detail on Reiner's description of how events have unfolded, building from Apple's January 2009 promise to aggressively defend its iPhone intellectual property to the company's decision to press its position as other multi-touch handsets have begun to come to market.

Reiner also notes that much of the conflict has occurred with companies utilizing Google's Android operating system, which is seen as Apple's true target. In response, Microsoft has reportedly begun seizing the opportunity by pushing forward with promotion of its Windows Phone operating system and patent portfolio, indicating that it is willing to stand closely with its partner handset manufacturers in any intellectual property dispute.

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25 months ago
Hard to argue -- they have copyrights and patents that appear to have been ignored.
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25 months ago
This is clearly targeted at Google's Android. When Jobs demo'd the original iPhone in January 2007, he stated:

"We filed for over 200 patents for all the inventions in iPhone and we intend to protect them"
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25 months ago
its there fault. make your own tec.
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25 months ago
While I generally don't like lawsuits like this (it stifles innovation and competition), I do get where they are coming from. Plus, it's hard to ignore the precedent given apples innovations in Mac OS, only to have them stolen by MS with windows. That lawsuit didn't go so well, but it was filed many years after the fact.

Anyway, it seems like everybody is suing everybody. This makes some strange bedfellows between Google and Apple. HTC is a proxy war.
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25 months ago

its there fault. make your own tec.


Multi-touch has been demoed before back in 70s / 80s , and therefore depending on that implementation - may make Apple's multitouch patents prior art.

The validity of Apple's patents will have to be tested in court.
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25 months ago
oh no I really hope they aren't gonna focus on this instead of making a better iphone for may/june... common Apple I want a new iphone!
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25 months ago
It is just natural.... this will happen sooner or later, not particularly evil per se.

Just like you put too much rats in a cage, eventually they will bite each other...

To us, it is good (not if you work for Apple or any other phone company)..... we will be able to make our choices....

Nothing will be perfet (ever)... so, just pick what ever pleases your eye/ear/mind.

Move on people, it is just a piece of gadget.... we live without it for most of human history, and doing fine.
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25 months ago
It might be better if we got rid of patent system completely. As it stands right now, it rewards innovation, but it hiders it as well. Overall, I doubt it adds much value. Of course, it is financially very rewarding for lawyers, which means a big powerful political lobby to argue against it.
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25 months ago

Multi-touch has been demoed before back in 70s / 80s , and therefore depending on that implementation -


Well, duh.

Too many would-be lawyers forget the basis of patent and copyright law - ideas are free, but specific expressions of that idea are always protected.

Doesn't matter a bit if multi-touch has been around a long while; if Apple developed a clear, unique way of implementing it, then it has a solid hold on its patents.
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25 months ago
Apple will end up buying htc with petty drawer cash, and add another company too that of which they have consumed :D
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