NCR Slapped Down A Third Time In Patent Suit Against Palm
from the wanna-keep-trying? dept
In early 2001, someone at NCR, going through a bunch of random old patents they had, found one for a “portable personal terminal.” While the product it described was unlike a PDA, they decided that the patent granted them the intellectual property rights to all PDAs. So, they immediately sued Palm and Handspring, the two major players at the time. In 2002, the court tossed the case out, saying it had no merit. NCR appealed the case, and had it slapped down again in 2003. Apparently NCR didn’t get the hint and couldn’t accept “no” for an answer. So they appealed again. Once again, the court has said no dice. PalmOne, which is what became of both Palm and Handspring after their merger says they hope that NCR has actually gotten the message this time and will leave them alone.
Comments on “NCR Slapped Down A Third Time In Patent Suit Against Palm”
What About E-Pass?
It’s good that NCR has been shot down (again), but what about E-Pass? They have sued Palm, HP and Microsoft, claiming that PDAs that store information securely violates an E-Pass patent on cards that store various information. We have covered that at pocketnow in not one, not two, but at least three places. It seems that Microsoft and HP lost an attempt to get this dismissed last year and trial is scheduled for March 2005.
The truly bizarre thing is that E-Pass seems to specifically focus on using their cards with PDAs, but are suing those same PDA makers.
It also looks like they’re trying to piggyback onto the 9/11 terrorist attacks, couching that as “news”, which seems pretty low.
Re: What About E-Pass?
Yeah, we’ve written about those guys too. The patent stuff is out of control.