US court throws out HTC's iPhone complaint

Apple claims victory in ITC hearing

The US International Trade Commission (ITC) has dismissed a patent infringement claim filed by HTC against the Apple iPhone.

The ITC said that it found no violation by Apple on a number of patent claims filed by HTC, including ones for power-source detecting technologies and ones for powering down devices when idle.

The move throws out patent complaints filed in June of 2011 by HTC against Apple.

HTC had filed an appeal in the case, in October after the ITC issued a preliminary ruling against it.

The decision is the latest legal ruling to go in Apple's favour. The company has previously won in cases against Samsung and HTC which have threatened to cut off imports of handsets and tablets in the US and Europe.

Patent law expert Florian Mueller noted that despite the latest ruling, the war between Apple and HTC was far from over.

"Last summer, HTC brought a set of new claims against Apple, most of them relating to nine patents it received from Google for the specific purpose of suing Apple." Mueller wrote in a post to his FOSS Patents blog.

"It's too early to tell, but at the outset those claims certainly looked stronger than the complaint that was dismissed today, whether they're strong enough is another question."