HTC will be forced to stop selling its latest pocket-sized smartphone, the One Mini, from December 6th, due to a court ruling.
The Taiwanese smartphone manufacturer was found by a London court to be infringing on patents held by rival Nokia and so the phone will be withdrawn from sale as of this Friday.
The patents in question relate to a specific chip used in the One Mini, which HTC has claimed is “a very small component”. Nevertheless, the company has somehow pinched Nokia’s patented idea or design and the Finnish company isn’t best pleased.
HTC will of course be able to reverse the sales ban by altering the chip design or switching to an alternative – something it is already looking to do.
The HTC One Mini is the smaller sibling of the HTC One; the company’s current flagship Android phone. The court hearing also found the HTC One to infringe on Nokia’s same patent as it uses similar internal parts to the Mini. However, the judge has delayed a sales injunction on HTC’s larger phone so that the company can either appeal or alter the phone so that Nokia’s patents aren’t breached.
Judge Richard Arnold ruled that an immediate injunction on sales of the HTC One would cause “considerable damage” to HTC, and quite rightly so as the phone has led the charge for HTC, helping the company towards 750,000 overall smartphone sales and around £221 million this year.
As for the One Mini, HTC has agreed to stop importing stock of the phone as of December 6th. Stock currently in circulation – in stores, warehouses and so on – in the UK will still be available for sale, but once that’s ran out, it might become pretty tricky to get your hands on one unless HTC can get around the patent infringement pretty quickly.