Apple HTC patent agreement ensures Samsung can’t acquire HTC to end patent infringement woes

Last week Apple and HTC signed a 10-year licensing deal that would end all current patent infringement lawsuits between the two companies and includes a 10-year cross-licensing agreement between the two companies. Now Samsung wants to take a look at the agreement considering it lost one of the biggest patent infringement lawsuit against Apple and has appealed against the $1 billion payout the court asked it to pay Apple.

Now some publicly available details of the agreement between Apple and HTC, unearthed by FOSS Patents, indicates a clause that would make the deal void if there is a change of control in either of the two companies. Apple, which is the most valuable technology company in the world with a market cap of over $500 billion is unlikely to be acquired anytime soon but one cannot say the same about HTC, which has suffered a string of bad quarters and could be an acquisition target.

This is not to say that HTC is up for grabs but this is likely to be a safeguard put into place by Apple to ensure someone doesn’t buy a controlling stake in HTC just for this patent agreement deal. And one of the companies that certainly would be interested is Samsung. Well, there are many other ways in which a deal can be terminated by either parties but Samsung certainly can’t opt for the easy way out.