Leaks Reportedly Detail More Of HTC’s 2013 Android Line, Peg M7 For Release Soon After Unveiling

HTC is set to show off something at a special press event in NYC on February 19 (the day before Sony’s, it turns out), and it’s quite likely that the company will debut its rumored new flagship phone, the M7. And now new leaks from the generally dependable Evleaks suggest the company has a multi-device lineup planned to follow the M7 with retail availability in Spring.

The two phones detailed by Evleaks on UnwiredView suggest that HTC will follow-up the M7 with a device with slightly more moderate specs, akin to how the One S was designed to complement the One X last year. And there will also be a down-market device, called the G2, that will be 2013′s equivalent to the HTC Desire C.

The M4 will reportedly pack a 1.2GHz dual-core Snapdragon processor, with a 4.3-inch 720 p display, 2GB of RAM, 16GB of onboard storage and a 13 megapixel rear camera. It’ll have a fairly limited 1500 mAh battery (but fewer pixels to push compared to the M7), and should run Android 4.2 Jelly Bean.

The HTC G2 (which is unrelated to the previous HTC phone of the same name) will have a 1.0GHz ARM Cortex processor with 512MB of RAM, a 3.5-inch HVGA (480 x 320) display, with a 5 megapixel rear camera and no front shooter, a 1400 mAh battery and Android Ice Cream Sandwich as its operating system.

Once again, HTC looks set to deliver a trio of solid Android handsets designed for various consumer budgets, but I am a little concerned that this won’t be different enough from the status quo to really excite consumers and propel sales to higher than HTC’s rather disappointing performance overall in 2012. That said, it’s still very early to be judging these phones considering they haven’t even been made official yet, so maybe there’s more to HTC’s 2013 lineup than what’s apparent from the spec sheets.

Samsung files redacted copy of ‘very lopsided’ Apple-HTC deal in U.S. court; Distinctive Apple User Experience not for sale

“Lawyers for Samsung Electronics Co Ltd filed a redacted copy of a 10-year patent licensing agreement between Apple Inc and Taiwan’s HTC Corp in a U.S. court late on Wednesday following a judge’s order,” Sakthi Prasad and Poornima Gupta report for Reuters.

“The court last month ordered Apple to disclose to Samsung details of the legal settlement that the iPhone maker reached with HTC, including terms of the 10-year patents licensing agreement,” Prasad and Gupta report. “The redacted copy excludes key specifics such as the royalty payments HTC would have to make to Apple for using some of the U.S. company’s patents. Also excluded are details of some of HTC’s covered products that were part of the licensing deal. The court order had stated that “only the pricing and royalty terms of license agreements may be sealed.”

Prasad and Gupta report, “As per the Apple-HTC agreement, the licenses do not include Apple’s design patents, according to a filing made with the District Court of Northern California. Apple and HTC also agreed to fully paid-up, royalty-free, non-exclusive, non-transferable, non-sublicensable licenses to certain of the other’s patents.”

Read more in the full article here.

“Samsung cannot and presumably will not try to argue that Apple is willing to license its design patents. Those are explicitly excluded from the agreement in a way that leaves no doubt whatsoever,” Florian Mueller writes for FOSS Patents. “Apple and HTC never had a design patent dispute. Apple’s design patent assertions have so far targeted mostly Samsung (in multiple jurisdictions), in one German case Motorola’s XOOM tablet (Apple lost that one but may still be pursuing an appeal), and a few smaller players in Germany, Spain and possibly other jurisdictions. Should HTC suddenly build iPhone and iPad lookalikes, Apple could still sue, but I doubt that this will be necessary.”

“I’ve been saying for a long time that at a minimum Apple needs to defend the distinguishability of its products, or its business would be subjected to totally unfettered, margin-destroying commoditization. The Apple-HTC agreement defines a very important term: Distinctive Apple User Experience,” Muller writes. “That’s what Apple seeks to protect and that’s something that is not for sale. The first time that an anti-cloning provision in an Apple license agreement was mentioned in public was this summer when an Apple executive testified in open court that Microsoft has a license to all Apple patents but that the parties agreed to an anti-cloning provision.”

Muller explains, “HTC can use what Google provides without fear of being sued by Apple. Otherwise HTC would be at a fundamental disadvantage vis- -vis other Android device makers. And while Google now knows these terms and could implement certain features just to help HTC and possibly others who will sign similar license deals in the future, Google also realizes that Apple might at some point enforce its rights against Google directly. Apple is obviously not afraid of Google. Otherwise it would never have sued HTC and other Google partners, and wouldn’t continue to be suing a wholly-owned Google subsidiary, Motorola Mobility.”

“Whatever the court will decide, it’s a very interesting question whether Samsung will agree to a license deal with Apple along the lines of the one accepted by HTC, especially now that Samsung sees how most of the terms of these deals may ultimately have to be shown in public. The Apple-HTC deal is very lopsided,” Mueller writes “There are no two-way payments: it’s all about HTC paying to Apple. The deal is under California law, and any arbitration proceedings would be under the auspices of the international division of the American Arbitration Association. HTC is not allowed to “clone” Apple’s products and features, but the agreement doesn’t limit Apple’s use of HTC’s patents. And various other details also reflect the fact that this was absolutely positively not a deal between equals.”

Much more in the full article – highly recommended – here.

MacDailyNews Take: Have a nice day, Samsung.

Apple-HTC terms are consistent with what Steve Jobs told Eric Schmidt and stated in public

“The public filing of the Apple-HTC license agreement, with the exception of its financial terms and a few details, is the most important smartphone patent news in the build-up to the Apple-Samsung injunction hearing,” Florian Mueller writes for FOSS Patents. “The first license deal ever to have become known between Apple and an Android device maker certainly raises the question of whether Apple’s current leadership has softened its stance compared to what the company’s iconic co-founder and two-term CEO, Steve Jobs, had in mind when he sued HTC in March 2010 (and two other Android device makers, Motorola and Samsung, within 13 months). Time and time again Apple’s adversaries have pointed courts to a passage in the biography authored by Walter Isaacson. Purportedly, Steve Jobs vowed to destroy Android because he considered it a stolen product, and said he was willing, if necessary, to spend all of Apple’s cash reserves on the pursuit of this cause. According to the book, he even declared himself prepared to wage ‘thermonuclear war.’”

“This reporting has led people to believe that Apple’s patent enforcement against Android was an emotional crusade more so than a smart business choice, and has made Apple appear to be a ruthless, anticompetitive aggressor,” Mueller writes. “I never believed any of that. In many interviews over the last 12 months I’ve urged reporters not to attribute to emotion what can be explained with strategic/competitive needs (differentiation vs. commoditization) and, especially, not to attach too much weight to what was, if authentic (which I obviously don’t know but which I’ll presume in the following for the sake of simplicity), merely a private comment and thus can’t be compared to public statements. In particular, comparing a private remark by Steve Jobs to public statements by his successor, Tim Cook, would be completely flawed and unlikely to lead to accurate conclusions.”

Mueller writes, “The different things Steve Jobs said must be weighted according to context. The logical starting point is not his biography but the press release with which Apple announced the HTC lawsuit in March 2010. It contains this Steve Jobs quote: ‘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,’ said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. ‘”We think competition is healthy, but competitors should create their own original technology, not steal ours.’ There’s no contradiction between that statement and the published terms of the deal.”

Much more in the full article – very highly recommended – here.

MacDailyNews Take: The walls are slowly closing in on the serial patent- and trade dress-infringers; the Apple wannabes who’ll never be.

And none of your derivative Droids are going to be able shut down all the garbage compactors on the detention level, either. This is how the worm turns.

Ever so slowly the screws of justice grind, yet grind, they do. Tick-tock, slavish copiers. Tick-tock.

Related article:
Samsung files redacted copy of 'very lopsided' Apple-HTC deal in U.S. court; Distinctive Apple User Experience not for sale – December 6, 2012
Boom! Apple sues HTC for infringing on 20 iPhone patents – March 2, 2010

Apple Tells Samsung How Much Its 10-year HTC License Is Paying

Gary Cutlack - Gizmodo UK

Apple has been ordered to help Samsung's legal battles a little, with a court telling it to share full details of the 10-year settlement it struck with HTC recently. Only it's not going to be made public.

Apple has already sort of complied, providing Samsung with a heavily redacted version of the deal's terms that removes 33 words from the agreement. This cropped version of the text fails to show the financial details of the agreement between Apple and HTC, which is presumably the most critical part of it as far as Samsung is concerned.

Apple claims Samsung already agreed to accept this redacted version of the text, but Samsung's now won the right for the full text to be released to its lawyers ahead of a December 6th hearing in its ongoing case with Apple.

HTC recently denied it was paying Apple $8 every time it sells an Android model, claiming the estimates were "outrageous." Samsung's lawyers will soon know the real number. [Guardian]

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