Photo: EngadgetFORTUNE — Apple (AAPL) may be on a winning streak with Samsung, but this week it lost two courtroom skirmishes with HTC — the first smartphone manufacturer to be sued in Steve Jobs’ “thermonuclear” war against Google’s (GOOG) Android operating system.

The first Macintosh was introduced by Apple’s then chairman Steve Jobs on January 24, 1984; it was the first commercially successful personal computer to feature a mouse and a graphical user interface rather than a command line interface.

The US International Trade Commission decided thisweek that HTC could continue to import the devices while itinvestigated claims a system for detecting telephone numbers ine mails was copied.

The two companies are fighting over the same group of patents in Germany, and HTC may attempt to use the High Court’s ruling to influence decisions elsewhere.

Furthermore, it ruled that three of the four — slide to unlock, multi touch and multilingual keyboard capability – were invalid.

“ High Court of Justice showed once again why it’s the most defendant friendly patent court in the world,” wrote FOSS Patents’ Florian Mueller in his assessment of the second ruling.

The Criminal Division hears appeals from the Crown Court, while the Civil Division hears appeals from the County Courts and High Court of Justice.

Michael Johnson is a business journalist based in New York, US. Michael has a passion for financial markets and breaking news stories and loves writing about business news, stock market, and economic opinions that matters most to its audience. Michael spends a lot of time discovering and researching latest financial markets and industry news stories in order to make sure the latest and greatest stories are brought to you first on BigBoardNews.com.