palmOne Wins Graffiti Lawsuit

For several years, palmOne has been facing a lawsuit brought by Xerox that charges that Graffiti infringes on a patent held by Xerox for its Unicode technology. palmOne has just announced that a summary judgment had been issued dismissing Xerox's lawsuit.

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. Palm, Inc. has since spun off PalmSource, maker of the Palm OS platform, and acquired Handspring to form palmOne. palmOne had retained liability for the Xerox matter.

This lawsuit has been tossed out of court before but has been reinstated as well. In 2003, a Court of Appeals sent the case back to the District Court to examine the validity of the patent in question.

Today, the district 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 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."

While this is certainly a victory for palmOne, the company gave up Graffiti last year. It was replaced by by Graffiti 2, which the company was certain didn't infringe on the Xerox patent.

Still, this isn't just a moral victory. At one point Xerox asked that Palm be banned from selling handhelds because they infringed on one of its patents. This motion was denied but Palm and later palmOne have had to be ready to pay Xerox licensing fees on every handheld the company has ever sold.

Related Links

• Appeals Court Asks for Re-evaluation of Xerox Patent