3Com's Palm Devices Hit With Patent Lawsuit

2000 B.C. Intell. Prop. & Tech. F. 032102
3Com's Palm Devices Hit With Patent Lawsuit

by Phenix Quach, Staff Writer

3Com, Inc., the maker of electronic organizers, is no stranger to lawsuits. In the past several years, 3Com has been entangled in intellectual property disputes with Xerox, Telxon and Penright. Now, 3Com has just been hit with its most recent lawsuit on the eve of its long awaited public offering of its popular line of handheld Palm Pilot products.

E-Pass Technologies, a Virginia-based smart-card technology company, filed a patent infringement lawsuit against 3Com in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. Hartmut Hennige, the founder of E-Pass, accuses 3Com of infringing on Hennige's 1994 patent (U.S. Pat. No. 5,276,311) for a multifunction, credit-card size computer that is capable of storing and accessing data from a variety of sources. E-Pass alleges that the Palm devices resemble its 1994 patent because they both are constructed in the shape of a card, utilize data from different sources, and have input means for recognizing and responding to passwords.

According to Stephen Weiss, an attorney for E-Pass, "Not only do 3Com's products utilize the E-Pass patented technology, but 3Com advertises, promotes and sells its products with literature that instructs customers on how to use its products in ways described very specifically and in great detail in the 1994 patent."

3Com's Palm division is responsible for three-quarters of all handheld computers sold and has marketed such products since 1996. E-Pass has yet to release its first device, but has held the patent since 1994. Many analysts look suspiciously on the timing of the lawsuit to come as 3Com prepares to place Palm in an initial public offering.

Donald DeLuca, an executive at E-Pass, denies that the IPO motivated the lawsuit. The goals of E-Pass in initiating the lawsuit, as articulated by Weiss, are "to stop 3Com from willfully infringing on the E-Pass patent and ensure that E-Pass and Mr. Hennige are compensated fairly for 3Com's misappropriation of their intellectual property."

3Com executives have yet to respond to the suit. Interestingly, 3Com, in a special ceremony at the United States Patent and Trademark Office, was recently awarded U.S. Pat. No. 6,000,000 for a patent entitled "Extendible method and apparatus for synchronizing multiple files on two different computer systems," a technology developed for the handheld Palm computers.