The U. S. International Trade Commission has said that it will impose a ban on the sale of smartphones from Taiwanese manufacturer, HTC that infringed an Apple patent on data detection.

Apple had accused HTC of infringement on a patent on data detection, which includes features such as touching a phone number or an address in an e-mail to dial or find the address on a map.

The second-biggest maker of smart phones in Asia has said that it will remove the features that are found to be infringing upon its rival's patents from the handsets. Thus it is believed that small changes to features would allow HTC to continue its sale of smartphones in the US market.

The legal conflicts are not the only challenge for HTC, which is a leading brand in the smartphone market as it faces increasing competition from Samsung's Galaxy Nexus and Apple's faster, Siri-enabled iPhone.

The company is forecast to post the slowest annual sales growth since 2009 and its first ever decline in profits since two years ago. Data from Bloomberg shows that HTC's revenue will increase 11 percent next year and profit will drop 6.7 percent.