Palm to pay Xerox $22.5 million to settle Unistrokes patent case

Back in 1997, Xerox filed a patent infringement suit against a predecessor to Palm, charging that the handwriting-recognition technology sold as Graffiti and formerly used in some Palm devices infringed claims of a Xerox patent which covered a Xerox system known as Unistrokes.

There was recently a legal decision favorable to Xerox, which however did not end the case. See the post on IPBiz of June 10, 2006 concerning validity/invalidity rulings concerning certain claims of US 5,596,656. Palm may have tired of this protracted patent litigation, concerning an infringement assertion over technology Palm no longer used.

One should note the following "patent peace" aspect of the settlement: The two sides also agreed to "patent peace," or a seven-year mutual covenant not to sue within mutually agreed fields of use.