In the latest judgement in a long line of patent cases between a
variety of mobile phone companies, the High Court have found that
certain HTC phones, containing chips manufactured by Qualcomm and
Broadcom, infringe a European patent owned by Nokia.
Nokia's patent is directed to a modulator using a Gilbert
cell (a circuit which can be used as an analogue multiplier, a
phase detector or a modulator) and they alleged that the Qualcomm
and Broadcom chips contained in some of HTC's phones included
such a modulator. The patent was found to be novel and
inventive over two previously published patent documents.
On finding the patent to be valid, the judge then found a number
of HTC phones, containing the Qualcomm or Broadcom chips, to
infringe the patent, based on confidential technical documents from
Qualcomm and Broadcom describing the architecture of the
chips. HTC argued that none of the alleged infringing phones
used a Gilbert cell because the chips did not contain
