HTC Willfully Violates the GPL in T-Mobile's New G2 Android Phone (Freedom to Tinker)

Courts don't typically say "oh, you've fixed it now, case closed". A court case against HTC wouldn't arise solely to obtain the source code for the current phone they ship. Such a court case would prevent HTC from repeating this license violation in the future (since they could no longer reasonably claim some kind of industry expected "grace period" in which they didn't have to comply with the license), and would seek some kind of restitution for the existing license violation. It would also serve as a warning for anyone else seeking to make the same mistake. And if HTC does get away with this, expect to see more companies doing the same; 90 days represents a substantial competitive edge, and since nothing says you can have 90, nothing says you can *only* have 90...

It doesn't matter if it takes years to settle this in court, HTC are causing harm to the copyright owners, which does not get undone by releasing the code later.

This is a situation where contacting customs may be more appropriate than the courts. According to Harald Welte, HTC has a habit of shipping new devices to the US, releasing source after 90 days, and then shipping to Europe (which is why Harald doesn't do anything about it; by the time he can get the evidence to make a claim, the problem has been fixed). If customs in the US knew about this, they could have a corresponding habit of holding HTC shipments until the source was released. Since HTC's motive is likely to have devices in customers' hands generating buzz as soon as possible, this would probably hurry them along quite effectively. Sure, they can try to ship their devices and fix their license compliance before anyone sues them, but the devices wouldn't get there on time if they try it, and they'd lose exactly the edge they're trying to get by cheating.