In perhaps the only war that wasn’t televised in the US, HTC lost its patent dispute with Apple, although the loss isn’t as bad as feared.

The US International Trade Commission found that HTC indeed infringed one Apple’s patent. As a result, any HTC’s device using these patents is banned from sales in the US as of April 19, 2012.

Thankfully, HTC still has time to work something out and the loss is not as bad, especially since Apple sued HTC over 10 patents. In fact, HTC said that it sees this as a win.

HTC said that the patent in question is called “data tapping” and allows for grabbing embedded information an using it for other purposes, e.g. grabbing a phone number during a call and using it for whatever. The company announced that the patent will be removed from all their phones soon.

More here.