Irvine’s Goldtouch Sues Microsoft Over Mouse
An Irvine-based developer of computer peripherals has sued Microsoft Corp. for allegedly stealing the company’s design for a computer mouse.
Goldtouch Technologies Inc., a small company that sells ergonomically designed computer hardware, accused Microsoft of infringing on the company’s patents and misappropriating trade secrets related to the Goldtouch Mouse when Microsoft began selling its IntelliMouse Pro last May.
A Microsoft spokesman declined to comment on the patent infringement accusation. As to the trade secret allegations, “We’re confident that the facts will show that there are no basis for these claims,” he said.
The suit, which Goldtouch filed late Monday in a federal district court in Texas, said company representatives met with two Microsoft officials on Sept. 3, 1997, to discuss the company’s designs for its mouse. Goldtouch hoped that Microsoft might agree to a joint venture or some kind of cooperative marketing arrangement, according to the suit.
Goldtouch is asking for unspecified compensatory damages, and punitive damages of $1 billion.
Microsoft, based in Redmond, Wash., is best known for its domination of the computer software industry, but it also sells more than half of all the computer mice in the country and has developed widely respected keyboards and joysticks. The company has agreements with many computer manufacturers who bundle the Microsoft mouse with their computers.
After Microsoft turned down the overtures from Goldtouch, the Irvine company in October 1997went on to market its mouse independently through retail outlets, the suit noted.
The lawsuit says that the latest version of the Microsoft mouse, IntelliMouse Pro, mimics the ergonomic design of the Goldtouch Mouse.
“It incorporates a lot of physiological design concepts that reduce stress in the fingers, the hands and the forearm,” Goldtouch President Mark Goldstein said in an interview.
The Goldtouch Mouse and the Microsoft IntelliMouse Pro both feature a slant that allows the devices to be gripped from a more vertical position, instead of a flat one that a typical computer mouse requires.
Goldtouch says it has a patent protecting the slanted design.
The company also says that during the September meeting with Microsoft they discussed the use of a rubber grip along the bottom of the mouse, a design that is part of the IntelliMouse Pro.
Goldtouch, which has all but one of its approximately 10 full-time employees in Irvine, said it filed its suit in Texas, where it keeps an office, because the dockets of the federal court there were not as crowded as in California.
