Earlier this week, the ITC ruled that HTC was infringing upon one of Apple’s patents and issued a ban preventing certain HTC phones from being imported into the U.S. Soon after the ruling was handed down, the company announced plans to modify its phones so that they no longer infringe upon this patent.

“[...] the ’647 patent is a small UI experience and HTC will completely remove it from all of our phones soon,” the company was quoted as saying.

Now, just a couple of days later, it looks like HTC has already successfully taken action to remove the offending feature, which allows users to interact with phone numbers and other types of formatted data in an unstructured document by tapping the number to launch another application, such as the dialer or SMS app. Bloomberg reports that the company has “completed a technical workaround” and quotes HTC CEO Peter Chou as saying the feature was rarely used in the first place.

“It’s actually quite rarely used,” Chou said.

Though the ITC ruling was in Apple’s favor, HTC isn’t too upset by it. The company said yesterday that it was pleased with International Trade Commission’s ruling and no wonder: According to CNET, Apple’s original complaint alleged infringement on 10 patents, as opposed to just the one that HTC was ultimately found guilty of.

“We are gratified that the commission affirmed the judge’s determination on the ’721 and ’983 patents, and reversed its decision on the ’263 patent and partially on the ’647 patent,” HTC told BGR this week. “We are very pleased with the determination and we respect it. However, the ’647 patent is a small UI experience and HTC will completely remove it from all of our phones soon.”

SOURCE via Bloomberg