In a dispute between Apple and HTC, the mobile phone manufacturers, the High Court has ruled that three of Apple’s patents are invalid. Two of the patents related to touch-screen technology (and, in particular, the “swipe to lock” functionality, which the High Court said was an “obvious” development) and the third related to multilingual keyboards. As a consequence, HTC had not breached those patents as they were not valid in the first place.
A further patent, which related to manipulation of photographs, was held to be valid but it had not been infringed by HTC.