HTC willing to negotiate with Apple in ITC patent dispute

Taiwanese hardware manufacturer softens stance

HTC is now willing to negotiate with Apple in the firms' bitter patent dispute, after an initial ruling by the International Trade Commission (ITC) earlier this month came down in favour of the iPhone maker.

Bloomberg reported HTC chief financial officer Winston Yung as saying that the companies "have to sit down and figure it out".

"We are open to all sorts of solutions, as long as the solution and the terms are fair and reasonable," he told the news agency.

"On and off we've had discussions with Apple, even before the initial determination came out. We're open to having discussions."

Earlier this month, the ITC judge found in an initial determination that HTC had infringed two Apple patents.

However, earlier in the month, HTC announced a $300m deal to acquire graphics and multimedia firm S3 Graphics, which itself won an ITC ruling against Apple over two patents.

Yung's admission that HTC is ready to talk may be down to the firm's continued poor performance on the stock market.

Last week, HTC's share price dropped to its lowest since January amid fears that the company's products could face an import ban in the US.

Patents expert Florian Mueller told V3 that HTC is in a "very weak position".

"A new document showed up in the ITC archive and it suggests that the acquisition of S3 doesn't give HTC much leverage because Apple can easily solve any problems it may have with S3's patents," he said.

"Apple isn't going to settle with HTC anytime soon unless things change in unforeseeable ways."