HTC’s complaint against Apple, which was filed with the U.S. International Trade Commission earlier today, is centered around patents for address book and power management technologies, specifically those found in the iPhone, iPad and iPod.
In a 32-page complaint (PDF), HTC details the five patents that it says Apple violates and asks the commission for an immediate cease-and-desist order that would prohibit importation, sales and marketing of the products.
The patents at the center of this complaint center around two issues:
The interaction between the address book and the phone dialer: Three of the five patents involve technology that allows the phone dialer and the information stored within the address book database - presumably phone numbers - to communicate with one another. This is the sort of technology that allows us to initiate a call by tapping the person’s name on the screen and have the phone “dial” it automatically.
Power management technology: The complaint addresses two separate patents related to power management. The first involves a method of “independently managing the power” in a combination phone/PDA. The complaint explains:
…the mobile phone system could be operated in a standby, sleep connection, or off mode while the PDA system can be operated in a normal, sleep or off mode. (The patent) provides efficient power management by controlling how the smart phone switches among the various combinations of the operational modes of the PDA system and the mobile phone system.
The second involves preserving the data when the phone goes into sleep or power off modes. The complaint explains:
…a smart phone may include a battery and a volatile memory for storing data when the battery supplies sufficient power. When the power supply is low, the smart phone is set to enter a sleep mode and the data that can be accessed from the volatile memory is transferred to a non-volatile memory. When the smartphone is changes and the remaining power of the battery exceeds the amount required for normal device operations.
