HTC’s chief financial officer said it’s time to work through its patent spat with Apple, but it’s unclear that the maker of the iPhone and iPad has any interest.
Winston Yung, CFO of HTC, told Bloomberg that the company is willing to negotiate with Apple as the two sides battle in the U.S. International Trade Commission over patents. Both sides have victories and HTC recently bought S3 mostly for the company’s intellectual property.
S3 won an ITC ruling against Apple and HTC scooped it up quickly. Yung’s comments indicate that HTC wants to talk now that it has S3 in the fold.
Also see: HTC: Pressure mounts to develop workaround to avoid Apple patents
In a logical world, you can easily predict where this is going. Apple and HTC could cross license patents, exchange a few dollars (HTC to Apple most likely) and the dispute could be put to rest. HTC already worked with Microsoft to settle any lingering patent issues that revolve around Android.
The big question is whether Apple would play ball. Apple doesn’t appear to have much interest in licensing its intellectual property. And why should it? Those patents are part of Apple’s secret sauce when it comes to hardware and software integration. If HTC’s patent arsenal is strong enough it could get Apple to the negotiating table. For now it looks like HTC wants to chat. We’ll see if Apple reciprocates.
