You know the patent Cold War that’s been brewing over Apple’s claimed exclusivity over multitouch tech? It just got hotter, but the heat comes not from the Palm Pre, but lil’ Elan Microelectronics.
Elan is a Taiwan-based touchpad manufacturer, best known for supplying the touchpads on several Eee PC models. And apparently they’ve got a well-leveraged patent position on multitouch tech: last year, Elan and touchpad giant Synaptics came to a cross-licensing agreement after an initial injunction in a similar lawsuit ruled in Elan’s favour. The case was settled out of court.
As of now it’s unclear what Elan is demanding, but it may be a last-ditch effort for a company struggling like so many other Chinese and Taiwanese OEM suppliers. But after their win over Synaptics, Elan is emboldened, thinking their legal position has some weight. Kind of like Afghanistan, maybe, in our little Cold War metaphor—the little fish that proves to be the graveyard of empires.
Whether Elan is being shadow controlled by Palm, or whether Palm execs are currently sending cases of thank-you champagne on the next container ship back to Taiwan, has yet to be verified. [NYTimes]
matt
April 9, 2009 at 9:28 AM
Oh apple, I love you so much! please apple, where can I get more of your awesome products! I’m soo glad your doing the industry a service by not letting any other company try and use multi-touch tech because they would never ever ever be able to make a product as awesome as yours and they would just be waisting their time. your such an awesome company apple!
(ok, so I know patents are nothing new, but atleast in other cases licensing agreements and things have been sorted out to allow other companies to use new tech, clearly something is wrong here. otherwise, given the success of the iphone, and the quick adoption of single touch tech, if apple was being anything other than a pain in the arse, we would have seen it every new phone coming out with it.)
Report PermalinkTony
April 9, 2009 at 11:07 PM
so, if you had developed it I guess you would be over the moon that someone else had ripped it off, regardless of your bullsh*t ‘in other cases’ argument ?
Upshot is that it is up to the developer. If they license it then so be it. If not, well sadly that means they are they only people who can use it…
Report Permalink