Judge Rules for Xerox in Patent Lawsuit Against Palm, 3Com

Palm Inc. and 3Com Corp. infringed Xerox Corp.’s patent for handwriting recognition software, a federal judge said Thursday.

The court now must decide the amount of damages and whether Palm can continue to use the software on its hand-held computers.

Xerox sued Palm, the biggest maker of hand-held computers, its then-parent 3Com and U.S. Robotics over Palm’s Graffiti software, which lets users learn a simple series of shorthand strokes to enter data such as names and addresses into hand-held electronic organizers.

U.S. District Judge Michael Telesca, who earlier had dismissed the case only to have an appeals court reinstate it, ruled Thursday that the Xerox patent is valid and that Palm’s Graffiti software improperly used the technology.

Officials at Palm and 3Com couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.

Shares of Stamford, Conn.-based Xerox rose 56 cents to close at $9.03 on the New York Stock Exchange. Shares of Palm rose 14 cents to $3.46, and 3Com shares fell 32 cents to $5.77, both on Nasdaq. Both companies are based in Santa Clara, Calif.

When he dismissed the suit earlier, Telesca said the Graffiti software didn’t infringe Xerox patents for the so-called unistrokes technology.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit reversed that decision, saying the judge misinterpreted how and where the symbols must be written to be recognized by the software.