Apple wins ban of HTC devices at US International Trade Commission

News on patents - good news for apple, bad for android fans...

http://www.theverge.com/2011/12/19/2647362/apple-wins-ban-of-htc-devices-itc

The Unit­ed States Inter­na­tion­al Trade Com­mis­sion just ruled in favor of Apple in its case against HTC and banned the impor­ta­tion and sale of cer­tain HTC devices. After a lengthy review, the Com­mis­sion found that HTC devices infringe two claims of patent #5,946,647, which is a sys­tem level patent issued in 1999 on ana­lyz­ing and link­ing data struc­tures— ulti­mate­ly impli­cat­ing Android itself and not HTC's spe­cif­ic imple­men­ta­tion. The deci­sion now goes to the desk of the pres­i­dent, who has 60 days to issue a rarely-used veto; the ban itself will go into effect on April 19, 2012 to pro­vide HTC with a tran­si­tion peri­od, and HTC will be allowed to import refur­bished prod­ucts for war­ran­ty replace­ment pur­pos­es until Decem­ber 19, 2013.