HTC Ready For Apple Patent War

chrb writes "The BBC have an interview with HTC CEO Peter Chou. Last week, a judge at the International Trade Commission found that HTC had violated two of Apple's patents. HTC shares fell 7% on the news. Chou predicts that HTC will win an appeal against the ITC finding in December. He also reveals that HTC is preparing to fight back; it will soon acquire an extra 235 patents from its takeover of S3 Graphics — including two that Apple has already been found guilty of infringing."

Re:...Huh.

[Nerdfest]

If you'd like to help out against Apple (on a different matter), the W3C is looking for prior art on a couple of Apple patents [w3.org].

Re:anti-competition

[chrb]

That's what Mr. Chou wants: "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. What it means is we don't want to copy anyone, we want to be a premium product. This world, this market is very big... is for all of us. Nobody should tell other people to leave and we should compete in the market place, let consumers decide... rather than in court."

Re:anti-competition

[BSDimwit]

What do you think these patent lawsuits are if not competing on innovation? I know it's not popular slashdot groupthink but patents are a way of staking claim to your innovations and preventing others from taking advantage of it in hopes that the resulting product will be better than the competition's. Apple is not your run of the mill patent troll. They actually make products incorporating these patentable inventions and I can't fault them for wanting to prevent other competing products from using those inventions.

Now I agree that software patents are a "bad idea," but not every patent lawsuit is about software patents. We all remember that Nokia managed to get a licensing out of Apple, so why shouldn't Apple be able to do the same for things they invented?