Court rules Xerox' Unistrokes patent invalid

Milpitas (CA) - A New York state jugde has dismissed claims that PalmOne’s handwriting recognition system Graffiti infringes on Xerox’ Unistrokes patent. Arguing that Unistrokes builds on technology invented earlier, a judge ruled that the software patent is invalid.

PalmOne announced that the summary judgment in its favor was issued last Friday. In a siginificant turn of the lengthy lawsuit, Judge Michael A. Telesca of the United States District Court for the Western District of New York ruled that the Xerox patent was invalid.

Xerox launched its lawsuit originally against US Robotics, which later was acquired by 3Com, in April 1997. The company claimed that Graffiti, today one of the trademark technologies of PalmOne handhelds, infringes on the the Unistrokes patent, which was invented at Xerox’ Palo Alto Research Center.

Graffiti itself was invented by Jeff Hawkins and Donna Dubinsky, the two developers of the first Palm Handheld in 1996 and later founders of Handspring. Handspring recently was acquired by PalmOne and Jeff Hakwins become chief technology officer of the company. Donna Dubinsky is a member of the board of PalmOne.

"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." PalmOne believes that the ruling will result in the dismissal of a lawsuit.

Xerox however called the ruling just "another round in the process." In a statement, the company said that "the District Court previously found that Palm’s products with the Graffiti handwriting recognition system infringed Xerox’s patent rights. Xerox has won two prior appeals of other pre-trial rulings in this litigation, and anticipates a favorable outcome in yet another appeal."