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To: chaz who wrote (23849)	4/28/2000 10:50:00 PM
From: Eric L	Respond to of 54805

Chaz, Re: WAP - Phone.com/Geoworks Patent Dispute Pardon if already posted here. >> WAP PIONEERS IN SLANGING MATCH OVER PATENTS By Emily Bourne, Total Telecom 26 April 2000 Phone.com said on Wednesday it has filed a lawsuit against fellow WAP Forum member Geoworks challenging its intellectual property rights patent. The mobile software developer claimed its technology does not infringe Geoworks's patent, and the patent itself is invalid. Geoworks, a Californian software developer, filed for IPR in 1990. The U.S. Patent No. 5,327,529 ('529) was granted in 1994, and in January this year, the company announced its licensing program to the WAP Forum. "This lawsuit seeks to put an end to Geoworks' repeated and unjustified accusations that virtually the entire wireless Internet industry infringes a Geoworks patent, which is directed to unrelated technology, and its threats to sue entities unwilling to succumb to its demands to take a costly and unnecessary license," Phone.com's filing says. "It's a surprise they've issued this as a private statement without us being informed first," said Ken Norbury, U.K. general manager at Geoworks told Total Telecom. To his knowledge, the company had received no notification of the lawsuit on Wednesday morning, though announcements were posted on the Internet on Tuesday. Redwood City, California-based Phone.com claims the '529 patent is unrelated to wireless or Internet devices and does not therefore apply to all WAP and WML based devices, as Geoworks claims. However, "it's a method patent rather than a patent that relates to any specific implementation," said Norbury. The patent was granted for the invention of a flexible user interface technology, enabling differently formatted text for different sized screens, the company said. Geoworks charges licensing fees of around $20,000 a year for the use of its technology. The patent applies only in the U.S. and Japan, because the company couldn't afford to apply for patents in every country. "This lawsuit shows that Phone.com favors litigation over the widely accepted business solution of licensing," said Geoworks's president and chief executive, David Grannan in a statement. In January, when the patent licensing program was first announced, Phone.com's Chuck Parrish was more upbeat on the subject. "Other companies including Phone.com are listing essential IPRs we think we own - it's part of the process," he said. Norbury said Geoworks's problem was that it was the first WAP Forum company to go down the licensing route. "I don't think anybody in the WAP Forum who has patented their technology would stand up and say they'd give up any right to license those technologies." "Geoworks has accused virtually every WAP-compliant wireless Internet product or service of infringing, directly or indirectly, at least claim 1 of the '529 patent," says Phone.com's filing. "Phone.com has no intention to take a license under the '529 patent. Hence, Phone.com is under a reasonable and serious apprehension that it will imminently be sued by Geoworks for infringement of one or more of the claims of the '529 patent." << - Eric -