The last memorable patent lawsuit for me was back in 2012, when International Trade Commission (ITC) ruled that HTC had infringed one of Apple's patent. As a result of this decision, HTC's shipment had been held for a while before they worked around Apple's patent.
Partial from the statement HTC gave to Android Central, they stated "the '647 patent is a small UI experience and HTC will completely remove it from all of our phones soon". Which it tells me no matter how small a patent is, as long as it can be put in the court to make a case, it is still a patent. Luckily it was only a small UI infringement, which HTC could just remove all relevant infringed components out of the interface. I could not imagine how bad it can get if HTC had infringed a hardware patent.
Not long after HTC infringed on Apple's patent, two companies finally settled on an agreement to not fight against each other for a decade. Which sounds like a long time, but HTC's lost cannot be easily recovered in ten years. HTC used to dominate the high-end Android phone market, but it is no longer the case now. Even with its HTC Sense as the killing feature, it can only get harder to reclaim the market back.
Originally Apple sued HTC for ten patent infringement, only one out of ten actually did make an impact on the decision. This means Android as an operating system itself doesn't explicitly violate Apple's patent. That's why the Android phone market is still growing steadily, even with Apple strategically filing patent violations against many other mobile manufacturers. I guess the way to strengthen Apple's market is through innovation, rather than spending money on lawsuits. Or maybe focus more on innovation, and then lawsuit.
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