Usually, these end up in manufacturers paying a royalty for using patents. Assuming Obama doesn't veto this issue, which is possible since its such a huge deal as HTC is the number one phone company in the US right now. But, who knows.

Worse case scenario is SenseUI gets stripped of some small minor back end functions that we dont see as those are the patents that have been hit. I suspect Google is ticked off now and will counter act this and start fighting harder to block apple products somehow. But, who knows. I wouldn't worry about this as its to block "imports starting 2012". That means current phones are already off the radar.

 

Sense UI should be just fine i think. Pity HTC didn't/doesn't have an indemnity agreement with Google-Android, and maybe free stuff has some drawbacks after all.
Patent '263... a fancy faxmodem string scanner or lame patent (not sure which one to call it yet ha ha).
Patent '647 datastream scanner... looks more interesting. Have seen this feature on another software/platform. (I don't use this feature - won't miss it.)
bye

(strictly my random personal opinion and not a professional opinion... the lawyers said we've gotta have disclaimers everywhere too.)

 

At the heart of the disputes are the kind of small but convenient features that would cause many people to complain if they were not in their smartphones. For example, the case decided Monday involves the technology that lets you tap your finger once on the touch screen to call a phone number that is written inside an e-mail or text message. It also involves the technology that allows you to schedule a calendar appointment, again with a single tap of the finger, for a date mentioned in an e-mail.

HTC, the defendant in the case and a Taiwan-based mobile phone maker using the Android system, said in a statement after the ruling that it would adapt its features to comply with the court

 

It doesn't effect phones already sold or warranty replacement phones. This ruling will be litigated for years but you might have to double tap on a data structure to dial it or add it to your calendar on your next phone. Not a big deal.

 

From what I read the ban relates to 1.6 to 2.2 hTC devices. Not 2.3 and higher.

 

TxGoat... Effect can be a verb as in "I'm going to effect a change." As a verb it means to bring about. But I'm with you when people write "How will this lawsuit effect us?"

 

Gizmodo also reported this.

 

Steve Jobs had come out publicly and declared that Apple would have no part in licensing its technology to Android, so whether or not new management sticks by that or capitulates remains to be seen.

The issue being described is covered by Apple's patents regarding data intention - the example given is that if a phone number appears in an email, you can tap it and just dial it that way.

And Apple's made a big thing of this set of patents surrounding that, and especially so against HTC.

The problem with blogs is that their short articles lack depth, so here's the rest of the story -

Motorola was suing Apple and attempting to have this body of work patented by Apple nullified - iow - the patents themselves dismissed. Apple's dirty laundry here is that while they may have been granted those patents, they ought not have been as the intellectual property and embodiments in question were already part of Motorola's existing art, and sold on the open market for some time prior to Apple's "invention" of the patented features.

When it looked to Apple like they were in deep water, they attacked HTC in an attempt to fragment Android and confuse the courts.

Google struck back by first saying it would use its intellectual property portfolio to assist in HTC's defense. Apple countered with more lawsuits - and Google countered with the Motorola buyout, a move that gives them ownership of the property in question. Apple countered with an identical lawsuit against Motorola.

Motorola has asked the court to put 20 Apple patents on the chopping block.

While the latest article is sensational and sounds very final - this ain't going to be over until the fat lady sings.

On a personal note, I would like to comment that when I first started reporting wrap-ups on the Apple suits on our forums some time ago, people were upset with Apple as if they were thieves. I responded that innovation might happen if we could find a settlement to move past all of this. When I started posting that the shoe was on the other foot, that ample evidence existed to show that Apple was indeed the real thief here, I was met with comments that it's time for the lawsuits to stop.

I think these lawsuits ought not have happened in the first place - the ownership claims by Apple are not all the blogs make them out to be, and our patent system was trashed and broken during the dot com days. But now that Android has a chance to win and perhaps get Cupertino to sit down and shut up when things aren't really theirs at all, I say go, go, go to the Android lawyers (whether retained by Google, HTC, Moto or Samsung, etc etc).

Net effect of this latest ruling on Rezound owners when the April 2012 deadline hits (and the rulings yet to come in the meantime) - in my personal opinion - zero effect.

 

Exactly. You'll still be able to copy and paste those text strings into a dialer or calendar app, but they won't be initially clickable.

I don't think that's true. My understanding is that HTC will issue system updates to remove the features from existing phones.

Are you sure? Even if the legal finding was narrowly targeted, I'd expect it to expand in the future.

 

The one that wins in cases like these are the lawyers. They rake in millions and Apple won't sell a single additional phone because you can click a phone number in an email. This is not a clever, patentable methodology. They should never have awarded that patent to either Apple or hTC. It is common domain. I've been hyperlinking since 1995, Apple. You didn't invent anything.

 

How broken is the US patent system? There's now a patent on the Bread Refreshing Method to help deal with stale bread.

I'll save you the googling - it's for making toast. I am not making that up.

Then we have the part where most Android phones (including the Rezound) is paying Linux intellectual property fees to Microsoft. Microsoft - the company that did all it could to discredit the open source community, bought a Linux portfolio and makes more money off of Android than off of their own Windows phone.