Visto triumphs in Seven patent suit

Wireless email vendor Visto has prevailed in a long-running patent infringement suit against rival Seven Networks, prompting a new legal challenge against RIM and potentially strengthening Visto's position in a pending spat with Microsoft.

On Friday, a federal jury in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas found that Seven had wilfully infringed on three separate patents describing components of a mobile email system and awarded Visto about $3.6m in damages.

The dispute isn't over yet, as Seven plans to appeal the verdict and to continue challenging the validity of the patents in question through US Patent and Trademark Office re-examinations. So far, one of the patents in question has been upheld as valid, while another has been rejected.

Meanwhile, "we believe minor alterations of the software will avoid the claims in the future, with no disruption to our customers or the user experience," Harvey Anderson, Seven's senior vice president of corporate affairs and general counsel, said in a statement.

Both companies' services, which give users remote access to email and data from behind corporate firewalls, are available through a number of the US' largest wireless carriers, including Cingular Wireless and Sprint Nextel.

Immediately after the victory over Seven, Visto filed a new suit against BlackBerry maker RIM, alleging infringement of four patents, three of which were at issue in the Seven dispute. The company is seeking an injunction and unspecified monetary damages.

Brian Bogosian, CEO of Visto, said in a statement: "Based on Visto's sweeping victory in court against Seven Networks on Friday, RIM must understand that there is no place in the mobile email space for this sort of behaviour. Under the law, which protects consumers from products that contain infringing technology, RIM should not be able to sell the BlackBerry system."

RIM dismissed the allegations in a statement on Monday, saying it is "fully prepared and equipped to deal with the matter" and did not expect the litigation to affect its customers. The company said: "Based on prior art and actual products in market, RIM believes Visto's patents are invalid," adding that it is considering "asserting its own patents" against Visto.

Visto's suit against Seven, and its new battle against RIM, show that the litigious wireless email market has yet to settle down following a settlement in the lengthy dispute between RIM and NTP. That patent battle, settled in March for $612.5m, eventually took a toll on deployments of RIM's popular BlackBerry devices and software.

Daniel Mendez, Visto's co-founder and senior vice president of intellectual property, said in an interview following Visto's announcement: "We developed fundamental technology to the space 10 years ago, and we want to protect that."

Visto has signed a licensing deal with NTP for its patents, which were validated by a jury verdict in 2002 (although two of them have received final rejections from the Patent Office). Visto's patents cover different parts of a wireless email system than NTP's, Mendez said. "NTP invented wheels, and we invented an engine but we're putting together a car here," he said in explaining the difference.

The win over Seven could also help Visto's position in two similar patent suits. Earlier this year, the company accused mobile email competitor Good Technology of infringing on four of its patents, three of which are the same as in the new RIM suit.

Another suit, filed with the same Texas federal court in December, accuses Microsoft's Windows Mobile 5.0 operating system of infringing on three of its patents that provide users with access to corporate email servers on their mobile devices.

Visto and Microsoft will soon have a scheduling conference to decide how that case will move forward, Mendez said. Some of the patents in the Microsoft case are the same as the ones validated in the Seven case but some are not, he said.

All of the pending suits, including the most recent one against RIM, were filed with the federal court in Texas' Eastern District, which has earned a reputation for friendliness to patent holders alleging infringement of their wares.

But even the dispute with Seven is not over. In a separate lawsuit, Seven countersued Visto in the same court, alleging infringement of two of its mobile email patents that it claims predate the Visto patents. That trial is scheduled to occur in June 2007.

CNET News.com's Tom Krazit contributed to this report

Anne Broache writes for CNET News.com