Before his death, Apple Inc. Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs famously vowed to go “thermonuclear” against Google Inc.’s Android operating system for smartphones. The company has been following through on Jobs’ threat, and ground zero is the International Trade Commission.
The tiny agency is poised to issue a final decision this week in the first fully litigated patent infringement case in the United States between Apple and an Android phone maker, HTC Corp. The decision, a test of sorts for Jobs’ assertion in a recent biography that Android is “a stolen product,” could reshape the market for smartphones and the rollout of high-speed 4G networks.
