HTC Loses Patent Case Against Apple at Trade Agency

(Updates with commission’s reasons in third paragraph.)

Feb. 17 (Bloomberg) -- HTC Corp. lost a patent-infringement claim against Apple Inc. at the U.S. International Trade Commission, the first of the Taiwanese handset maker’s cases targeting the iPhone.

Apple didn’t violate an HTC patent for controlling how mobile phones manage power supply, the Washington-based commission said today. The ruling completes a review of an October finding by an agency judge, who had determined that Apple devices didn’t infringe HTC’s intellectual property.

The commission also found that HTC wasn’t using the invention at issue in the case, a requirement to have an infringement violation found against another company. The agency’s full opinion will be made available after both sides have a chance to redact confidential information.

“We are disappointed by the commission’s ruling, and look forward to reading the full opinion to understand its reasoning,” Grace Lei, HTC’s general counsel, said in an e- mail. “We’ll explore all options, including appeal.”

HTC, the second-largest maker of devices that run on Google Inc.’s Android software, has a second case against Apple that is scheduled to begin Aug. 30. Cupertino, California-based Apple and Taoyuan, Taiwan-based HTC have been using patent lawsuits to help protect their share of the smartphone market, which expanded 55 percent last quarter.

Apple filed first in March 2010, seeking to block imports of HTC’s Android phones. Apple contends that Android devices infringe its patents. The commission, which can ban imports of products found to infringe U.S. patents, found in December that HTC was infringing an Apple patent related to data-detection. HTC said it’s been able to design around that feature.

IPhone Sales

Apple sold 37 million iPhones in the fourth quarter, helping the company double its profit in the period and capture 24 percent of the global market, according to researcher International Data Corp. Samsung Electronics Co., which makes the Galaxy phone, accounted for 23 percent of smartphone sales, followed by Nokia Oyj, Research In Motion Ltd., and then HTC at a 6.5 percent share.

The HTC case against Apple is In the Matter of Portable Electronic Devices, 337-721, U.S. International Trade Commission (Washington).

--With assistance from Adam Satariano and Danielle Kucera in San Francisco and Tim Culpan in Taipei. Editors: Romaine Bostick, Michael Shepard

To contact the reporter on this story: Susan Decker in Washington at sdecker1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Michael Shepard at mshepard7@bloomberg.net