Apple Suit Makes HTC Change Phones

Apple scored a victory today in its lawsuit against smartphone-maker HTC, the New York Times reports. A US trade commission ruled that HTC will have to tweak some functions on its US smartphones in order to avoid patent infringement. The ruling, which can be appealed, involves technology that allows you to tap on a phone number or a date in an email to call someone or add an appointment to your calendar. HTC says it will change the software before the ruling kicks in on April 19, the Wall Street Journal reports.

The ruling also worked against Apple, overturning an earlier decision about how HTC organized software in its phones. The Taiwanese company would have had to work harder to avoid infringing on that patent. But HTC is just a drop in the legal bucket for Apple: Its ultimate target is Google, which made the Android system that runs on more than half of the world's smartphones. In fact Steve Jobs once vowed "to destroy Android, because it's a stolen product." (More HTC stories.)