HTC Gains Patent Foothold Against Apple With Purchase of S3 Graphics

[MacRumors]

VIA Technologies today announced that it and its partner investment firm WTI are selling off S3 Graphics to smartphone manufacturer HTC.

The acquisition is notable because S3 Graphics recently won a partial victory over Apple in an initial judgment on a patent dispute being reviewed by the U.S. International Trade Commission. HTC's purchase of S3 will turn those patents over to the smartphone company and be a significant bargaining chip should the initial determination that Apple has violated two of the patents hold up.

Owning S3 Graphics may boost HTC in its legal battle against Apple, which last year sued the Taoyuan, Taiwan-based company for patent infringements. S3 Graphics last week won a ruling against the maker of iPhones and iPads regarding two patents for compression technology.

"Buying a patent portfolio will be very useful to us," Yung said, declining to comment on specific lawsuits.

Apple and HTC have been locked in a legal battle for well over a year, beginning with Apple's March 2010 lawsuit accusing HTC of infringing 20 Apple patents with its Android-powered handsets. HTC filed a countersuit several months later, but no resolution has yet been reached.

Article Link: HTC Gains Patent Foothold Against Apple With Purchase of S3 Graphics

 

[RafaelT]

Means nothing, just another bargaining chip in the patent game.

 

[blackburn]

Well good riddance, I *really* hated s3 graphics cards.

 

[Bluemeanie1976]

So it has nothing to do with right, or wrong, simply who can get the best position patent wise? Pathetic. I'm bored with all these lawsuits.

 

[louis Fashion]

Don't you just HATE HTC? The products just FEEL shoddy.

 

[ChazUK]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 2.3.4; en-gb; Nexus S Build/GRJ22) AppleWebKit/533.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile Safari/533.1)

Don't you just HATE HTC? The products just FEEL shoddy.

Pesronally, no. My Apple gear has been flawless as well as my HTC stuff.

I've got no reason to pledge allegiance to either companies as I enjoy their products.

 

[blackburn]

Don't you just HATE HTC? The products just FEEL shoddy.

The only htc I ever had, was fine in fit and finish. But it had serious heat issues and windows mobile did suck donkey balls. The only good thing was that calls where loud and clear. I don't know about new products, but I wasn't impressed with my now battery dead diamond. But my iPhone 2g did heat up too.

 

[diamond.g]

Well good riddance, I *really* hated s3 graphics cards.

It was a shame that neither S3, PVR, or Matrox could keep up with ATI and NVidia.

Drivers was a huge sticking point with the others. Shoot Intel is still feeling that to this day.

 

[blackburn]

It was a shame that neither S3, PVR, or Matrox could keep up with ATI and NVidia.

Drivers was a huge sticking point with the others. Shoot Intel is still feeling that to this day.

Yeah don't even remind me of the drive issues I had with S3. S3 and SIS only gave me nothing but trouble when servicing computers

I had a matrox milenium G400 good old days yet the drivers were plagued with issues

 

[xodiak]

should really have no affect on Apple for the current case as the purchase is happening after the legal filings. For the future I'm not sure how it could affect things but the current situation it shouldn't mean anything.

 

[coder12]

Don't you just HATE HTC? The products just FEEL shoddy.

I absolutely love my Touch Pro 2. I don't need a data plan (stuck on Sprint here) and have wifi everywhere. Plus I customized it to suit my tastes.

On the other hand, I loath their customer service and love my iDevices a bit more thanks to seamlessness.

 

[seek3r]

It was a shame that neither S3, PVR, or Matrox could keep up with ATI and NVidia.

Drivers was a huge sticking point with the others. Shoot Intel is still feeling that to this day.

Or that NVidia bought 3dfx, I really liked my voodoo 3

 

[oheckyeah]

Don't you just HATE HTC? The products just FEEL shoddy.

Don't you just HATE fanbois? These people just FEEL ignorant.

 

[johnydecali]

Or that NVidia bought 3dfx, I really liked my voodoo 3

Or that Adobe bought Macromedia... I think that the competition between Adobe and Macromedia could had created more progress than what we have with CS5. Not that I hate it, I love it.