Steve Jobs had come out publicly and declared that Apple would have no part in licensing its technology to Android, so whether or not new management sticks by that or capitulates remains to be seen.
The issue being described is covered by Apple's patents regarding data intention - the example given is that if a phone number appears in an email, you can tap it and just dial it that way.
And Apple's made a big thing of this set of patents surrounding that, and especially so against HTC.
The problem with blogs is that their short articles lack depth, so here's the rest of the story -
Motorola was suing Apple and attempting to have this body of work patented by Apple nullified - iow - the patents themselves dismissed. Apple's dirty laundry here is that while they may have been granted those patents, they ought not have been as the intellectual property and embodiments in question were already part of Motorola's existing art, and sold on the open market for some time prior to Apple's "invention" of the patented features.
When it looked to Apple like they were in deep water, they attacked HTC in an attempt to fragment Android and confuse the courts.
Google struck back by first saying it would use its intellectual property portfolio to assist in HTC's defense. Apple countered with more lawsuits - and Google countered with the Motorola buyout, a move that gives them ownership of the property in question. Apple countered with an identical lawsuit against Motorola.
Motorola has asked the court to put 20 Apple patents on the chopping block.
While the latest article is sensational and sounds very final - this ain't going to be over until the fat lady sings.
On a personal note, I would like to comment that when I first started reporting wrap-ups on the Apple suits on our forums some time ago, people were upset with Apple as if they were thieves. I responded that innovation might happen if we could find a settlement to move past all of this. When I started posting that the shoe was on the other foot, that ample evidence existed to show that Apple was indeed the real thief here, I was met with comments that it's time for the lawsuits to stop.
I think these lawsuits ought not have happened in the first place - the ownership claims by Apple are not all the blogs make them out to be, and our patent system was trashed and broken during the dot com days. But now that Android has a chance to win and perhaps get Cupertino to sit down and shut up when things aren't really theirs at all, I say go, go, go to the Android lawyers (whether retained by Google, HTC, Moto or Samsung, etc etc).
Net effect of this latest ruling on Rezound owners when the April 2012 deadline hits (and the rulings yet to come in the meantime) - in my personal opinion - zero effect.
