Newport Inventor Settles Patent Suit With Sharp : Technology: He claimed firm’s Wizard organizer infringed on his idea. Terms were withheld.

An Orange County inventor said he reached a settlement with Sharp Corp. over a lawsuit alleging that the giant electronics company’s Wizard organizer infringed on his patented technology.

George D. Margolin, a Newport Beach resident, said Wednesday he settled with Sharp in July. Specific terms of the agreement, such as whether money changed hands, are confidential, he said. Attorneys for Sharp did not return calls seeking comment.

Margolin’s attorneys sued Sharp in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles in February, 1992. The inventor alleged that Sharp’s Wizard, an electronic organizer that can fit into a pocket, infringed on a patent he won in 1976 for what he called a “folding, replaceable and interchangeable keyboard.”

Even though personal computers were only in their infancy then, Margolin said, he saw a bright future for portable, pocket-sized devices.

“I liked little portable things, and so I got the idea for it,” he said.

Margolin said he tried for two years to talk to Sharp to no avail, so he sued. Though he holds 25 patents, he said, this was the first lawsuit he has filed.

Sharp has sold hundreds of thousands of the organizers.

Margolin, 63, said he makes a living from inventing. He has lived in Orange County since 1977, when he moved from New York.

One new device he is working on now is a retractable medical syringe that would reduce accidental needle pricks. He has also invented various electronic items such as a motion-picture background system used by a variety of Hollywood studios and a hand-held microfiche reader for Bell & Howell Co.

Margolin said he will give a talk at an inventors convention Sunday at the Ritz-Carlton Huntington Hotel in Pasadena. The title of his speech: “David Really Can Fight Goliath.”