Push email companies Visto & Seven settle patent battle

Stuart Corner
Wednesday, 11 July 2007 10:17

Business IT - Technology

Rival push email technology companies, Visto and Seven, have settled a three-year long patent battle with Seven "Acknowledg[ing] the validity and enforceability of Visto's patent portfolio and [agreeing] to licensing terms including monetary and non-monetary considerations."

No other details were disclosed. However Ross Bott, president and CEO of Seven, said: "As we continue our efforts to innovate and add value for our customers, this agreement provides the licenses that are needed to protect their investments in the booming push email market." A Seven spokeswoman said the agreement: "fulfils our promise to settle this dispute in a favourable manner for Seven and our customers."

In December 2006 The US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas upheld a jury decision from April 2006 that found Seven had infringed on three of Visto's patents. The Judge ordered Seven to pay Visto $US7.7 million in damages plus costs, a figure double that set by the Jury in April.

However by that time the US Patent and Trademark Office had made an initial ruling that one of the patents in question was invalid. In a statement at the time, Seven said it expected that the Patent and Trademark Office's final rulings would reject other Visto patents while it appealed the December decision. However it decided instead to negotiate with Visto.

The dispute was one of many that are or have been hitting the burgeoning push email industry. The most famous was that between BlackBerry developer, Research in Motion and NTP which threatened to shut down the BlackBerry system. That was settled in March 2006 with RIM being forced to pay NTP $US612.5 million.

Within weeks RIM had copped another suit, this time from Visto. Visto has also launched patent infringement suits against Good Technology and Microsoft. Visto itself is reported to licence technology from NTP.