Apple comes out fighting against HTC again

IN RESPONSE TO HTC filing a complaint against Apple to the US International Trade Commission (ITC), Jobs' Mob has filed another patent infringement lawsuit against it.

According to Apple, HTC is infringing two more of its patents related to the user interface on its mobile devices. The lawsuit was filed in the Delaware federal court.

Jobs' Mob claims that HTC infringes four of its patents in regards to mobile phones. Two of these patents were mentioned in the first lawsuit too, and they have been included in the new filing due to some minor corrections.

The two new Apple patents HTC allegedly infringes are patent 6,282,646, "System for real-time adaptation to changes in display configuration", which was granted in 2001, and patent 7,380,116, "System for real-time adaptation to changes in display configuration", assigned to Apple in 2008. The two patents are similar and the second is seen as a continuation of the first one.

The initial filing was all about attacking HTC devices running under Google's Android OS.

HTC responded with a complaint to the ITC alleging patent infringement and asking for imports of Iphones, Ipods and Ipads to be banned in the US.

The ITC said it would investigate Apple, and this latest lawsuit might be retaliation for that. In other words it is all defensive posturing by Jobs' Mob to start a mobile phones patents war in the US courts.

There is some concern that Jobs' Mob is using the US patent system to try to shut down the open source Linux-based Android OS. Large IT companies often sit on a bunch of patents that they use in defensive actions against rivals in the event of intellectual property disputes, or to stifle competition. µ