“Shares of Palm Inc. fell as much as 8 percent on Thursday as investors worried it could face a legal challenge from arch-rival Apple Inc. related to Pre, Palm’s upcoming touchscreen phone,” Sinead Carew reports for Reuters.
“Apple’s Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook said late on Wednesday that his company would use all its weapons to fight anybody that ‘ripped off’ its intellectual property,” Carew reports. “Some analysts said that could mean Apple will sue Palm over Pre’s multi-touch interface, which lets users navigate a Web site by pinching their fingers together or spreading them apart on the phone’s screen.”
“Apple, which has been much lauded for its multi-touch feature in iPhone launched in the summer of 2007, was careful not to name a specific company in its comments, but several analysts saw them as a thinly veiled threat to Palm,” Carew reports.
“‘Palm is the first one that would spring to mind. You’ve got a new product with similar features to iPhone and you have executives leading the charge from Apple,’ said Avian Securities analyst Matthew Thornton,” Carew reports. “Thornton was referring to executives such as Palm’s Executive Chairman Jon Rubinstein, who used to be top hardware engineer at Apple. Fred Anderson, now a director at Palm, was previously Apple’s chief financial officer.”
Carew reports, “However, Palm spokeswoman Lynn Fox said in an email that ‘Apple was not the first to do multi-touch. Palm has been building its own intellectual property portfolio for 15 years, and we will defend it vigorously, if necessary,’ said Fox.”
Full article here.
Again, Palm’s Pre dog and pony show and their spokeswoman’s bluster are nothing more than takeover bait. They simply do not have the resources necessary to create another mobile platform, especially one that is superfluous. Perhaps they think they can entice the likes of Microsoft’s Ballmer? If Palm’s Pre is not a ruse, then those responsible are deluding themselves.
We’ve been pushing the state-of-the-art in every facet of design… We’ve been innovating like crazy for the last few years on this and we’ve filed for over 200 patents for all of the inventions in iPhone. And we intend to protect them. – Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveiling iPhone, January 9, 2007
