The International Trade Commission has rejected HTC's attempts to use five patents on loan from Google against Apple in smartphone-related complaint. ITC Administrative Law Judge Thomas Pender agreed with Apple's arguments that only Google, and not HTC, has the proper legal standing to assert those patents.

HTC became the first target of legal action by Apple in 2010 after the company warned smartphone makers that Android violated its iPhone-related patents. While a federal lawsuit is pending, Apple also filed a parallel patent infringement claim with the ITC. Apple ended up with a ruling in its favor, while the ITC rejected HTC's counter-complaint against Apple.

Not to be undaunted, HTC quickly filed another ITC complaint against Apple using five patents assigned to HTC by Android-maker Google. However, Judge Pender ruled on Friday that HTC did not have the proper rights to the patents to use them for a Section 337 complaint. The ruling was published on Monday, according to FOSS Patents.

That's not the end of HTC's trouble with the ITC, however. Apple won a ruling against HTC in December based on its "data detectors" patent. HTC claimed it would work around the ban by eliminating the feature in software, but Apple claims HTC's workaround still violates its patent. A mandatory review of recent One X EVO 4G LTE devices caused a minor delay in getting them ready for a US launch. But Apple has asked the ITC to ban both devices, along with a couple dozen other HTC smartphones.