@Jonno-the-First I see your point and, in some ways, agree that would make sense. However, the problem is this: if both parties are allowed to continue business as usual until one side is found guilty (assuming the infringement claim stands) then the innocent victim, the innovator could have been harmed beyond measure. It's sort of like a neighbor wanting to cut down all the trees on your property: if the city/town allows him to proceed, your trees are gone -- even if he's later found to have been wrong. At that point, the damage is done. So, the "safer" route is to prevent harming the patent holder.
But obviously, the system is not perfect, because if the defendant is not guilty of infringing, then they have been prevented from selling a legitimate product, which is obviously detrimental to their business.
In this case, however, Apple has the patent and the ITC has ruled that (for now, anyway) the patent is valid and HTC is infringing. There has been no injunction against them (over this issue) yet and actually won't be until April, which gives HTC time to ensure that its devices do not infringe. So, in a sense, no harm, no foul -- it just means HTC has to revise and update devices or stop selling those devices a few months from now.
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