ITC delays ruling on Apple's suit against HTC until Dec 19

The  final ruling by the 6 person ITC panel on whether or not HTC infringed on Apple patents has been delayed until December 19th. The critical ruling was originally supposed to be announced on Wednesday and if the court upholds the original ruling from July, the Taiwan based company will have been found to have infringed on a pair of Apple patents. That result could lead to a request from Apple to have HTC products banned from sale in the States, where the company gets half of its revenue.

When the initial ruling was issued in July, other Android manufacturers and Google worried that Apple could end up successfully asking the court to stop the sale of all Android products in the U.S. and this led Google to give away nine of its patents to HTC to use as ammunition against Apple. In addition, Google then offered to purchase Motorola Mobility in a patent play.

The final ruling from the ITC on the Apple suit against HTC was originally expected on December 6th, but was rescheduled for December 14thbefore being changed once again to December 19th.

source: Reuters