Wireless email provider Visto prevailed in a patent infringement suit against Yahoo and Sprint partner Seven Networks; Visto’s attorneys celebrated by filing a lawsuit against BlackBerry maker Research In Motion.
Visto disclosed its victory late last week in a long-running suit against Seven concerning several patents related to mobile email. Seven will have to pay about $3.6 million to Visto in damages.
A jury in the federal court for the Eastern District of Texas found Seven willfully infringed on Visto’s technology. Three patents were considered in the case; one was rejected by the US Patent Office as invalid, while another was upheld. Seven believes the third patent will be found invalid as well.
While Seven is countersuing Visto in a trial scheduled for June 2007, Visto immediately turned its legal machinery to Waterloo, Ontario. Research In Motion (RIMM) recently paid a hefty settlement to NTP to end an infringement lawsuit and a possible injunction against the use of RIM’s service on BlackBerry devices in the United States.
Visto claims RIM infringes on four patents it holds. One patent Visto holds, 6,085,192 titled, “System And Method For Securely Synchronizing Multiple Copies Of A Workspace Element In A Network” recently withstood the Patent Office’s re-examination during the Seven trial.
Last June, Yahoo began offering push email over the Sprint (now Sprint Nextel) network. Seven fulfilled the mobile push technology component of that Yahoo Mail for Mobile service.
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David Utter is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business.
