GearBits

palmOne Wins Dismissal of Xerox Lawsuit

palmOne today announced that the lawsuit filed against it by Xerox claiming infringement of its 'unistroke' input method has been summarily dismissed. The overly broad patent and the existence of prior art invalidated Xerox's lawsuit.

MILPITAS, Calif., May 21 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- palmOne, Inc. (Nasdaq: PLMO) announced that summary judgment had been issued in its favor dismissing Xerox Corporation's claim that palmOne's former text-entry system, Graffiti(R), infringed a Xerox patent. In a decision released today, Judge Michael A. Telesca of the United States District Court for the Western District of New York held that the Xerox patent was invalid.

The summary judgment ruling will result in the dismissal of a lawsuit brought by Xerox in 1997 against Palm, Inc. and its former parent, 3Com Corp. Palm, Inc. has since spun off PalmSource, Inc., maker of the Palm OS(R) platform, and acquired Handspring, Inc. to form palmOne, Inc. palmOne had retained liability for the Xerox matter.

"We firmly believed that the broad interpretation of the patent, as it evolved in this case, would render the patent invalid," said Mary Doyle, senior vice president and general counsel for palmOne. "We are very pleased that this court has agreed."

"This is a terrific outcome," said Todd Bradley, palmOne president and chief executive officer. "We've persevered for years to achieve this result and the vindication palmOne deserves."

The Xerox patent in question is U.S. Patent No. 5,596,656, which covered unistroke symbols. The court held that the patent was invalid because, "The prior art references anticipate and render obvious the claim," or that the unistroke system was not a unique invention.

We're glad that the judicial system seems to have taken the most rational view in this case. It would be nice if some other patents awarded for blatantly obvious "innovations" got invalidated as well.

Now, palmOne, how about offering the original Graffiti on some of your devices for those Palm OS users who can't stand Graffiti 2?