HTC has no plans to settle with Apple says chairwoman
updated 06:42 am EDT, Wed August 29, 2012
Cher Wang defiant in the face of Apple legal threat
HTC chairwoman Cher Wang has said that HTC has no plans to settle its outstanding lawsuits with Apple. Her comments follow Apple’s overwhelming win against Samsung in a Californian court last week. Wang's comments are also set against a prevailing view that the most important aspect of Apple’s win were that the patents it tested in the trial were upheld by the jury, while Samsung’s standards-essential patents used in its countersuit were deemed to have been uninfringed by Apple in its products.
“Samsung’s defeat does not mean that Google Inc’s Android camp is defeated,” Wang reports the Taipei Times.
Although Wang is publicly taking a tough stance on the issue, the $1 billion damages bill that Samsung is required to pay Apple (subject to the verdict being upheld) is likely to give any Android OEM taking on Apple in the U.S. court system second thoughts. In the case of HTC, its countersuit is reliant on the same failed approach that Samsung attempted to use against Apple in its use of standards-essential patents.
Moreover, its attempts at using this strategy are hanging by a thread. It only has two patents left in its arsenal, after some were knocked out by the ITC and others were withdrawn by the company itself. Apple has countersued HTC under U.S. antitrust laws for attempting to force Apple to pay a higher than typical rate for its standards-essential technologies. It has also already had products banned from sale in the U.S., which were only cleared to ship after it implemented a software workaround.
Furthermore, with HTC’s One range of handsets failing to capture significant market share away from either Samsung or Apple, its financial position continues to weaken considerably. After seeing massive plunges in profit in consecutive quarters, it can ill-afford a substantial payout to Apple if their current dispute heads to a jury.
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Joined: 08-11-06
In most Asian cultures, losing face is almost the most important thing in life to avoid. Hence they find it almost impossible to admit to having made a mistake, so they make hardball comments such as this. This really is a clash of cultures as well as of legal systems, companies and personalities. If they cannot adapt, they will ultimately fail in Western markets.