Want to build your own iPhone? You may run into patent trouble in the U.S. if you get too far, but if you pick the right emerging market, you may be able to pull it off without running into patent trouble. Indian-American scholar Vivek Wadhwa throws out this knowledge – the “Patent-Free Zone” – to budding entrepreneurs on TechCrunch. Put simply, you could go to Mexico – where Apple doesn’t have many patents filed – and create a similar product there without much legal trouble. And it extends to any number of products. It’s actually a smart approach – as long as you have the right product and the right market. source
HTC strongly advocates intellectual property protection and will continue to respect other innovators and their technologies as we have always done, but we will continue to embrace competition through our own innovation as a healthy way for consumers to get the best mobile experience possible.
HTC Chief Executive Officer Peter Chou • Regarding the lawsuit that Apple filed against it. They’re not backing down, which is probably a good move on their part. If anything, though, Google should figure out a way to help them, seeing as it’s, again, a proxy war. HTC notes that it’s made 50 smartphones since 2002, so they know a thing or two about innovation in the market. source
Oh boy, this could get ugly. HTC, which produces a number of Google Android phones (including the Nexus One) was sued by the iPhone maker for violating 20 Apple patents. “We can sit by and watch competitors steal our patented inventions, or we can do something about it. We’ve decided to do something about it,” noted Steve Jobs. “We think competition is healthy, but competitors should create their own original technology, not steal ours.” Holy crap. Did you hear that SLAAAAAAAPPPPP? source
They could set themselves up for a patent battle with Apple. When the Google Nexus One launched, one of the biggest things it was lacking was multitouch – a seemingly obvious advantage the iPhone (along with Palm’s Pre and Pixi) held over it. Apple has a lot of patents on the technology, which would seemingly make it off limits. Today, though, Google enabled the feature in a software update, which should at the very least cause a cluster#(&@ … or nothing. We’ll see. source
nokia Has lost massive market share after the iPhone’s release. Sued Apple for patent infringement. Apple rebuffed. Sued Apple again, claiming that nearly all products Apple makes infringe their patents.
apple Has completely changed the market that Nokia owned for about a decade. Claims Nokia essentially copied their phones. Is now asking the ITC to block all imports of Nokia phones into the U.S. source