Apple violating Chinese court order despite software update

Feng Li | Getty Images News | Getty Images

Apple staff members celebrate as customers coming the Wangfujing store on October 20, 2012 in Beijing, China.

Qualcomm said it believes Apple remains in violation of a Chinese court’s orders to stop selling iPhones despite a software update that Apple pushed on Monday.

Qualcomm on Dec. 10 said it had won a preliminary court order in China banning Apple from selling some older iPhone models that the court found violated two Qualcomm software patents. The same day, Apple said that all of its phones remained on sale in China.

But on Dec. 14, Apple said that it would push a software update to its iPhones this week. The Cupertino, California-based company said it believed it was in compliance with the court’s orders but that it would update its software “to address any possible concern about our compliance with the order.”

The update appeared to have been pushed to iPhones on Monday, according to user reports on Twitter, though Apple would not confirm to Reuters that it had been pushed.

“Despite Apple’s efforts to downplay the significance of the order and its claims of various ways it will address the infringement, Apple apparently continues to flout the legal system by violating the injunctions,” Don Rosenberg, Qualcomm’s general counsel, told Reuters in a statement on Monday.

Apple never publicly commented last week on why or how it believed its current iPhones for sale in China complied with the court’s order, which concerned patents on software features for switching between apps on a smart phone and resizing photos before setting them as a wallpaper on a phone.