The U. S. International Trade Commission has said in an initial ruling that HTC had violated two patents belonging to Apple.

Apple alleges that HTC’s phones are using features that are patented by the company and are offered on its iPhone smartphone. The ITC administrative law judge said in the initial judgment that HTC infringed upon two of 10 patents Apple had filed a complaint over in March 2010, according to HTC.

The final riling form the ITC on the suit is yet to be announced. A decision favoring Apple even on a single patent would mean that HTC’s products could be banned from being imported into the US if it is not able to come to an agreement with the US giant.

The Taiwanese manufacturer has said that it will appeal the decision. "HTC will vigorously fight these two remaining patents through an appeal before the ITC commissioners who make the final decision. This is only one step of many in these legal proceedings," said Grace Lei, general counsel for HTC.

The two patents relate to a "system and method for performing an action on a structure in a computer" and a "real-time signal processing system for serially transmitted data." HTC’s loss would mean that Apple might take more actions against other Android powered devices.