HTC got caught off-guard a few days ago when HTC’s shipments of One X were stalled at customs because of a previous patent fight HTC had with Apple. So now they are checking if HTC infringes one of Apple’s patents or not. But HTC has already built a solution around it, by making a new custom build that avoids that particular patent infringement.
ITC found that HTC’s Android messaging app and the browser were infringing on Apple’s patents, but they were limited to identifying data structures like a phone number or e-mail in them and then showing a menu that allows you to pick from a list of actions. But fortunately for US users, this only happens in the international version of HTC One X, because for the US one, for both AT&T and Sprint, HTC used a custom Android build that removes that specific menu. Now if you tap the e-mail or the phone number, it immediately opens the e-mail client or the dialer, which seems more intuitive to me anyway.
HTC has also built a new App Associations app that allows users to set what kind of actions they want as default for when they press the a phone number or an e-mail inside a text message or e-mail. This is to get around the patent infringement, while also allowing power users to change their preferences.
While Apple may want to settle the lawsuits with Samsung, they haven’t yet made it clear that they want to do the same with HTC. HTC was actually the first Android manufacturer Apple sued, since they were the first ones to make Android phones. These battles will continue for a while longer, I’m sure, but I think eventually Tim Cook will want to end all these lawsuits.