Apple has won another victory against HTC thanks to a new ruling by the International Trade Commission. On Friday afternoon, the ITC dismissed HTC's original patent complaint against Apple, upholding its initial ruling from October that said Apple had not violated HTC's patents in its implementation of iOS.
Apple first began its attack on HTC in March of 2010 by filing a federal patent infringement suit along with a similar complaint with the ITC. HTC responded with its own counterattacks on Apple, the two bickering over who owns certain parts of each other's respective operating systems. In October of 2011, the ITC's Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) made an initial ruling that Apple had not violated HTC's patents, but the decision was not final and remained subject to a six-person review panel.
Friday's ruling upholds the decision of the ALJ, leaving HTC out in the cold. This, however, isn't the only case going on between HTC and Apple—the ITC had ruled in favor of Apple on a different case between the two companies in December, saying that HTC's smartphones would face an import ban if they didn't remove a feature that allowed users to tap on data to bring up other information. (HTC says it has already found a solution and won't be facing the ban after all.) The ITC also sided with Apple in a patent infringement claim brought by HTC subsidiary S3 Graphics in November, and another ITC decision between HTC and Apple is currently on the calendar for November of this year.
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