U.K has banned HTC from selling its One Mini smartphone after a court ruling that the company has infringed a patent used by Nokia Corp.
In October, the U.K Supreme Court discovered that the Taiwanese company had infringed Nokia’s European patent number 0998024, which is called “Modulator structure for a transmitter and a mobile station.”
HTC argued that the microchips said to infringe Nokia’s patent was just a tiny component and therefore doesn’t give good reason for the sales ban. The company also argued that since HTC smartphones run on Google’s Android OS while Nokia smartphones run on Microsoft’s Windows Phone OS, they do not compete with the latter.
However, it didn’t stop Judge Richard Arnold to rule the ban of HTC One Mini sales on Monday.
HTC didn’t waste time and immediately filed urgent application to appeal. In a statement reported by the Telegraph , the company said, “Whilst the Court also granted an injunction that affects other third party chipsets, we have filed urgent application to appeal. In the meantime, we are working with our chip suppliers to explore alternative solutions.”
Nokia, on the other hand, responded, “Pending the appeal, HTC has undertaken not to ship any more of the infringing products into the UK, except the HTC One which it may continue to sell until the conclusion of any appeal. If HTC does not succeed on appeal, the injunction will take effect on all infringing products. Nokia is also claiming financial compensation for the infringement of this patent.”
According to court documents, a total of 715,000 units of HTC smartphones worth £221 million ($362.2 million) were sold in the U.K from January to September this year.
HTC's One smartphone was also believed to infringe the patent, but a ban has been deferred to give HTC ample time to appeal.
Judge Arnold said in his decision that the sales ban of HTC’s One would cause “considerable” damage to the company’s U.K business.
