HTC has filed an answer to Apple’s complaints against them involving patent infringement, Groklaw reports. In its reply, HTC denies infringing the patents, but also claims that four of the four of the patents are invalid for “failure to comply with one or more of the conditions for patentability set forth in Title 35 of the United States Code, including, but not limited to, utility, novelty, non-obviousness, enablement, written description and definiteness in accordance with 35 U.S.C. §§ 101, 102, 103, 112, and/or 116, or are invalid pursuant to the judicial doctrine barring double-patenting.” In addition, HTC claims that it has license agreements with third-party suppliers that allow it to do some of the things Apple claims are infringing. Apple filed suit against HTC in March.
Apple, meanwhile, has asked that all four current cases involving these patents—including both Nokia’s suits against Apple and Apple’s suits against HTC—be consolidated “at least for purposes of coordinating pre-trial activities.” “Consolidation is appropriate in this instance because the four cases involve numerous common issues of law and fact, including eleven patents that Apple has asserted against both Nokia and HTC,” Apple said in the filing (PDF Link). “Given the overlapping patents and technologies at issue in the cases, consolidation offers the benefit of conserving resources and promoting judicial economy by avoiding the need for duplicative discovery or any other redundant litigation activities, such as multiple Markman hearings concerning the same patents. Importantly, consolidation before a single judge will also ensure that there are no inconsistent pretrial rulings—most notably inconsistent constructions of claim terms in the eleven overlapping patents.”
