Thursday, June 29, 2006

Palm to pay Xerox $22.5 million to settle Unistrokes patent case

Back in 1997, Xerox filed a patent infringement suit against a predecessor to Palm, charging that the handwriting-recognition technology sold as Graffiti and formerly used in some Palm devices infringed claims of a Xerox patent which covered a Xerox system known as Unistrokes.

There was recently a legal decision favorable to Xerox, which however did not end the case. See the post on IPBiz of June 10, 2006 concerning validity/invalidity rulings concerning certain claims of US 5,596,656. Palm may have tired of this protracted patent litigation, concerning an infringement assertion over technology Palm no longer used.

One should note the following "patent peace" aspect of the settlement: The two sides also agreed to "patent peace," or a seven-year mutual covenant not to sue within mutually agreed fields of use.

1 Comments:

Blogger ink&&ink said...

If Palm no longer uses this software why did the legal decision favorable to Xerox not end the case?

I didn't even know this was still going on, and i also know that due to this law suit, Palm stopped using this software and developed something else.

Im sure Palm is tired of this protracted patent litigation however i do not understand how Xerox is not. I also think after the legal decision favorable to Xerox that even if they do not end the case i dont think they will get anymore out of this.

Thank you for the informative article.

-Gretchen
Xerox Phaser Ink

10:18 AM  

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