Justice Richard Arnold of the England and Wales High Court granted Nokia a final injunction to stop HTC from continuing to infringe upon a European Patent held by Nokia related to mobile phone chips. The judge had ruled in October that HTC's One phone used those chips.
HTC said that it would appeal and is working with its chip suppliers to explore alternative solutions. It is not likely that the ban would harm the company too much. The One Mini is also not its flagship model and Europe accounts for around 20 percent of the company's overall sales.
The British judge had allowed HTC a partial stay on the ruling, so that it can continue selling its flagship One model pending an appeal, because a ban would cause "considerable damage" to HTC's UK business. The smaller One Mini, the judge said the balance came down in favour of refusing a stay because HTC had designed and launched it when it knew it was facing a claim for infringement of the patent. HTC started selling the One series in March.
