If you haven't heard, Germany has pretty much become the hotspot for smartphone and tablet patent litigation. Most recently, HTC has been hitting headlines in its ongoing battle against IPCom, an intellectual property firm. IPCom claims that HTC's smartphones violate a number of its patents in the realm of 3G GSM technology. HTC says that the last time it made a phone which might have violated those patents was in 2009, and that it has since developed a workaround which does not infringe on IPCom's patents.

A court in Karlsruhe issued an injunction against HTC because of these patents last week. It seems that HTC is of the belief that its products no longer violate the patents in questions, and may continue distributing its products in Germany, potentially violating IPCom's injunction. A violation of such an injunction could result in large fines for every device shipped into the country which is deemed to infringe on IPCom's patents.

But it seems unlikely that HTC, a multi-hundred-million dollar corporation, would go violating injunctions without doing so on sound legal advice.

There have been no reports actually indicating HTC has violated the injunction, or which devices are included that injunction specifically.

BBC via BGR