ITC Ruling Threatens Future of Android | PCWorld

Apple won a preliminary victory over HTC--and over Android by proxy--when the ITC agreed this week that HTC smartphones violate two Apple patents. The ITC decision could be a sign that the Android party is over, and the mobile OS could be in trouble.

Why is the ITC ruling such a death blow? Because the patents in question are not unique to HTC--they are integral to the Android OS itself. If HTC is found to be violating these two Apple patents, then so are Motorola, and Samsung, and anyone else making Android devices.

Apple is waging war against Android by proxy with patent battles against HTC and Samsung.Florian Mueller, an expert on intellectual property, explains in a blog post, "Those patents are apparently infringed by code that is at the core of Android."

Mueller has created a table that walks through the two patents and compares the patented concepts against the HTC / Android implementation. Reviewing the information on the tables, Mueller exclaims, "It's hard to see how any Android device could not infringe them, or how companies could work around them."

One of the primary benefits of Android--and a driving force behind its broad adoption by smartphone vendors, and rapid success in the market--is that the OS is open source (well..almost), and license free. More and more, though, it seems like the lack of licensing paid to Google for using Android will be more than compensated for by fees and royalties being paid to Apple, Microsoft, and others that the Android OS infringes on.

As it stands, Microsoft is making more money from Android licensing agreements with companies like HTC than it is from its own Windows Phone 7 mobile OS. It is also pursuing legal action with Samsung and has proposed a deal of $15 per Android device.

Those costs start adding up quickly. Vendors like HTC and Samsung then have to choose whether to pass the costs along to consumers by charging more for the Android devices, or eat the expense and cut severely into their own profit margin.

via pcworld.com