The lawsuits just seem to keep on coming this year. 2010 has started out with a pretty aggressive move from Cupertino based Apple. The company filed a massive lawsuit against HTC, the Taiwan based maker of the HTC Desire and Wildfire Android phones, regarding 20 patents for software and hardware technologies that they have allegedly infringed upon.
The issue was brought up early this year and has since been a starting point for many other legal disputes that Apple has been having lately. HTC, being a partner in the development of the Android operating system, can be conspired by Apple as much as a rival as Google. The attack on HTC was meant to cripple development of Android systems.
In response, Google declared that they would stand behind HTC in the lawsuit. Most of the devices in the lawsuit covered were Android mobile devices, but none had been proven to be infringing on Apple’s patents. In retaliation, HTC also filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Apple regarding 5 various patents –one that the HTC has responded to and has began a formal investigation as well.
Now it appears that Apple does not like playing a defensive role and has once again filed a new lawsuit against HTC.
HTC is not the only company that is taking Apple to court however. According to reports, Apple still has a couple of other patent infringement lawsuits to handle as well. The first is from Finnish manufacturer Nokia and the other, from Taiwanese electronics manufacturer, Elan Microelectronics.
Nokia has been embroiled in a legal dispute with Apple since last year and many believe the new lawsuit is a continuation of the two companies’ less than amiable exchange. On the other hand, the Elan Microelectronics case is regarding multi touch technology –a case that Elan has already won against Synaptics in an earlier lawsuit.
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