Grant Gross
Senior Writer

Good Technology faces patent suit over push e-mail

news
Jan 31, 20062 mins

Lawsuit alleges Good's push e-mail services contain patented Visto technology

Visto has filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Good Technology, saying its push e-mail services contain patented Visto technology. Visto will seek a permanent injunction against Good Technology’s push e-mail service, which is used in several mobile devices, Visto said.

Visto announced Monday it had filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Texas. Visto, in a press release, said its lawsuit alleges that Good Technology products, including its push e-mail service GoodLink, violate patents Visto has held for nine years.

Good Technology has allegedly violated four Visto patents, including a patent for synchronizing e-mail between a client site and a central site and a patent for using a workspace data manager to access and synchronize network data, according to Visto.

The lawsuit seeks a permanent injunction against GoodLink and what it claims to be Good’s other infringing technology, which has been used to power several mobile devices including Palm’s Treo, Hewlett-Packard’s iPAQ hw6500, and Motorola’s MPx220. The lawsuit also seeks monetary damages.

A Good Technology spokeswoman said the company didn’t have an immediate comment on the substance of the lawsuit. “Until we have an opportunity to see and review this complaint, we’re not in a position to comment on it,” she said.

In another patent lawsuit, filed by NTP, Research in Motion (RIM) faces a potential ruling barring the company from selling its BlackBerry e-mail devices in the U.S. With that threat, it’s important for Visto to protect its own intellectual property as an alternative to RIM’s technology, said Brian A. Bogosian, Visto chairman, president and chief executive officer.

“There are justifiable marketplace jitters about whether BlackBerry service will be shut down by a federal court next month,” Bogosian said in a statement. “With Visto, all users, including BlackBerry users, have a safe harbor alternative to RIM that offers protection from intellectual property risks. Good Technology, like other late entrants to this market, has no patents directed to wireless e-mail and very clearly infringes on our long-held intellectual property.”

Grant Gross

Grant Gross, a senior writer at CIO, is a long-time IT journalist who has focused on AI, enterprise technology, and tech policy. He previously served as Washington, D.C., correspondent and later senior editor at IDG News Service. Earlier in his career, he was managing editor at Linux.com and news editor at tech careers site Techies.com. As a tech policy expert, he has appeared on C-SPAN and the giant NTN24 Spanish-language cable news network. In the distant past, he worked as a reporter and editor at newspapers in Minnesota and the Dakotas. A finalist for Best Range of Work by a Single Author for both the Eddie Awards and the Neal Awards, Grant was recently recognized with an ASBPE Regional Silver award for his article “Agentic AI: Decisive, operational AI arrives in business.”

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