HTC withdraws appeal against German ban

TAIWANESE PHONE MAKER HTC has withdrawn its appeal against an injunction banning the sale of its 3G devices in Germany, adding to a growing list of banned mobile products in the country.

Intellectual property firm Ipcom sued HTC over a number of its patents, securing a German court judgement against HTC over the infringement of a particular patent relating to a user priority assignment algorithm, which Ipcom claims is used in devices throughout the world.

HTC was planning to appeal the decision, which was to be decided on Monday, but at the last minute it backed down from its plans, suggesting it was not confident of the result it would receive.

"Apparently, HTC has accepted it had no realistic chance of winning this case - the courts have clearly established that HTC has been infringing our patents and now given us the means to put a stop to it," said Bernhard Frohwitter, managing director of Ipcom. "Since HTC has never to come up with an offer that adequately reflects the value of these patents, IPCom has been left with no choice - we will use the right awarded by the courts, likely resulting in HTC devices disappearing from shops during the crucial Christmas season."

Ipcom indicated that it would not rest on its laurels after this decision, but that it is still pursuing similar injunctions against Finnish mobile maker Nokia over a number of patents. It said that these cases against Nokia are being handled by the same court and judge, which suggests it is likely to obtain a similar ban against several Nokia products.

Ipcom's extensive patent library primarily comes from German electronics company Bosch, which sold them to Ipcom in 2007. Since then Ipcom has been pursuing a number of companies over their alleged use of patented technologies. It has reached a number of licensing agreements with many of these companies, but HTC and Nokia were two major firms that refused to sign a deal.

It is not yet clear if HTC will try to alter its products to circumvent the ban, as Samsung is doing with its Galaxy Tab in Germany, or if it will attempt to negotiate a licensing deal with Ipcom, but Ipcom will likely want more money for access to its patents than it requested before.

Earlier this week the EU Competition Commissioner Joaquín Almuni expressed concern over injunctions banning products, particularly citing the Samsung and Apple case. He is likely to be further irked by this latest patent war. µ