Taiwanese smartphone maker HTC on Thursday filed a counterclaim against Apple in a Florida court over a patent infringement claim made by the U.S. technology giant in March.

"HTC respects innovation and intellectual property rights and will continue to aggressively protect our intellectual property," the company said in a statement.

HTC claimed in a filing on Tuesday to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida it has been assigned all rights, title and interest of U.S. Patent No. 7,571,221 (the '221 patent) entitled "Installation of network services in an embedded network server," which was assigned to HP.

HTC said that the suit was filed in a district court in Florida but declined to elaborate as the case had entered formal litigation proceedings.

According to the Taipei based Apple Daily newspaper, HTC claimed in the suit that Apple's MacBook Air, MacBook Pro and iPhone have infringed on two patents it acquired fromHewlett-Packard last year related to computer networks.

Apple recently won a ruling in another case with HTC when a judge dismissed five patents that HTC tried to assert in that case that had been borrowed from Google. The patents, cited in a case with the U.S. International Trade Commission, had been loaned to HTC last summer in an apparent attempt to beef up Android equipment makers without getting Google directly involved.

Apple and South Korean giant Samsung are also locked in a number of suits against each other in international courts, with both companies vying for a bigger stake of the smartphone and tablet markets.

Apple also has infringed, according to HTC, one or more claims of the '221 patent in consumer products using the iOS or OS X operating systems, which contain embedded network servers and software and services such as Newsstand. The infringing products include Macs, mobile communications devices such as various versions of the iPhone, and mobile computing devices including versions of the iPad, it said.