In handing down a massive defeat
to Apple in a watershed patent tussle, British Judge Christopher Floyd ruled that HTC’s
devices don’t infringe the four patents charged by the Cupertino-based iDevice
vendor. The judge found in fact that three of the four patents are actually invalid.
This is a huge blow to Apple, which had seen some temporary judgments go its
way in other jurisdictions on its patent claims.
Besides the ludicrous “slide to
unlock” farce, today’s verdict also affected Apple’s patents for scrolling
through images, character set selection, and multi-touch capability. These
patents were arguably Apple’s most potentially-damaging weapons in the global
IP wars the company started with Android, and by invalidating them, the British
court has effectively gutted the iPhone maker’s campaign to litigate its
competitors out of the UK market.
