An appeals court judge has handed Xerox a partial
victory in a continuing lawsuit against Palm last week, but left
the door open for Palm to appeal against a previous
ruling.
The long-running lawsuit centres on Graffiti, an input
technology that is a central part of Palm's PDA platform.
The case dates from April 1997 when Xerox sued US Robotics,
which was later acquired by 3Com. Xerox contended that the
Graffiti input technology infringed on patents the company held for
its Unistrokes handwriting recognition software. 3Com spun off Palm
in early 2000.
The US Court of Appeals rejected an appeal by Palm lodged in
December 2001. That ruling found that a patent held by Xerox
regarding input technology was "valid and enforceable" as part of
the case, in which Xerox sued Palm and 3Com.
The appeals court also found that the ruling did not
sufficiently analyse issues related to whether Xerox's patent is
enforceable, Xerox said.
Palm could not immediately be reached for comment on Thursday's
decision.
About a year ago, Palm was ordered to pay a $50m bond as
insurance in the dispute.
On Thursday, Xerox asked the judge to block sales of Palm PDAs.
It had made the same request a year earlier, when Palm was
instructed to pay the bond, but was turned down then because the
court ruled that continued sales of PDAs by Palm would not
irreparably harm Xerox.