Palm responds to Apple’s legal threat

By on Jan 23, 2009 at 4:23 PM
News January 23, 2009

During Apple’s earnings conference call on Wednesday, acting CEO Tim Cook made it clear that Apple was ready to defend its intellectual property using any weapons at its disposal. The unnamed target of this thinly veiled threat is presumably Palm, whose upcoming Pre contains features like a multi-touch enabled UI that are found in the iPhone. Some of this ire towards Palm might arise from the fact that the Pre was spearheaded by former Apple head of hardware engineering, Jon Rubenstein, and designed in part by engineers he wooed away from Apple. Palm however, is not afraid of Apple’s war mongering words and has responded by stating:

Palm has a long history of innovation that is reflected in our products and robust patent portfolio, and we have long been recognized for our fundamental patents in the mobile space. If faced with legal action, we are confident that we have the tools necessary to defend ourselves.

Apparently, mere words from Apple are not sufficient to bully Palm into submission. Palm is prepared to go toe to toe with Apple over the innovations in the Pre and we can call this first round of debate a draw with both sides defending their technological territory. What happens next is in Apple’s hands and we will have to wait and see if this public posturing and heated rhetoric will be followed up by formal legal action.

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  • Don Louie

    The Pre has a slide out keyboard too, Frederic. Not all touch screen, try one out in the store in a few months when it comes out. I want to see where this threat of litigation goes, if they’re basing it on the iphone wasn’t most of that a better version of former tech?

  • backbeat

    ^Many patents _are_ improvements on older applications and methods, not that you would have a clue about that. ‘Unique’ and ‘useful’ are the generic terms which have always been the bedrock qualifiers to judge utility patent applications.

    Idiot.

  • Scott

    I’m sick of companies trying to lock down technology by patenting obvious things. Patents are supposed to be for non-obvious ideas that were not prior art before to the patent filing. Furthermore, filing a patent doesn’t give you exclusive claim on a product, it just gives you an advantage if you sue.

    Touch and multitouch technologies and concepts existed before Apple went patent crazy on them, Apple just rammed their patent through the USPTO with lots of lawyers and caveats. Now they are using their behemoth status to intimidate companies from using the technology. This is holding back progress.

    I hope that Apple does sue Palm and their patent claims are found to be overreaching in court. This will free up smaller companies to continue to develop technology.

  • backbeat

    Any evidence of what the specific beef is that Apple has with Palm that only you are privy to?

    Site the patent app number or patent no. itself to show how “Apple just rammed their patent through the USPTO with lots of lawyers and caveats”. Let’s explore your theory more exhaustively, shall we?
    ;)

  • Lee

    Come on, stop talking about this. These guys were responding to baited questions designed to create a story.

  • Don Louie

    Where is any information on what is the meat and potatoes of the dispute. At this point it’s just a threat, we would be better off speculating on the launch of the iphone 4G.

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