
© opensourceway
The International Trade Commission's ruling that HTC devices running Android violated two Apple patents as per the patent laws puts the future of Android and HTC in jeopardy. This violation of the patent laws is just an initial determination made by an administrative law judge and this ruling will face a review by a six member commission to reach a final decision.
This ITC ruling could mean trouble for Motorola, Nokia and Samsung also since the patent laws violation is due to a fundamental Android OS component. The bone for contention is the Linkify functionality of the Android OS which is allegedly a patent laws violation of the iOS running on the iPhones.
The second patent laws violation is due to the 'real time signal processing system' which is used for real time services such as audio and video processing. This application has an Apple patent. The lawsuit by Oracle against Google for infringing 7 Java patents also adds to the trouble and Android might have to restructure the fundamental OS architecture to get out of this legal tangle.


