This article is more than 1 year old
PalmOne settles WLAN gaming patent clash
Who fragged who?
PalmOne has come to an out-of-court accord with Peer-to-Peer Systems (PTP), the technology holding company that sued the PDA pioneer in January 2003 alleging patent infringement.
Terms of the settlement were not made public - or, rather, they'll tell you but you won't be able to tell anyone else.
Back in 2003, PTP claimed that the ability of two or more PalmOne - then trading as Palm - devices to connect wirelessly for the purpose of multi-player gaming amounted to an infringement of US patent 5,618,045, which PTP maintains on behalf of Jerusalem-based inventors Michael Kagan and Ian Solomon. They filed the patent in 1995. It was granted two years later.
It's a very general patent that covers pretty much any device that can connect wirelessly to another on an ad hoc basis for the purpose of playing games.
When the PalmOne lawsuit was initiated, PTP was already in litigation with Cybiko, a designer of handheld games consoles. It recently reach a settlement with that company too. Again, the terms of the agreement are shrouded in secrecy.
PalmOne has yet to comment on the settlement. ®
Related stories
Palm faces WLAN gaming patent infringement suit
Sierra sued over 'flawed' Voq smart phone
SMIC coughs $175m to settle espionage allegations
Rambus sues four for GDDR 'infringement'
RIM infringed NTP patents, appeal court rules
Good Technology settles with Lawsuits in Motion
Related links
US patent 5,618,045: Interactive multiple player game system and method of playing a game between at least two players
US patent 4,572,509: A video game network
Biting the hand that feeds IT
