Palm to ‘vigorously’ defend its IP against Apple
Palm has owed to fight back vigorously if it faces a potential legal showdown with Apple over its new touch screen smartphone Palm Pre. Responding to a question by a Wall Street analyst about iPhone’s competitive edge during Apple’s first quarter earnings call, Apple’s acting chief executive Tim Cook replied that it’s difficult to judge products that haven’t entered the market yet, while the iPhone has sold more than 17 million units.
He added that Apple is confident with where it is competitively, adding, “As long as [competitors] don’t rip off our [intellectual property], and if they do, we’ll go after anybody that does.”
Asked if he was referring his comments to Palm, Cook’s said:
I’m not talking about any specific company. I’m just making a general statement. We think competition is good, it makes us better. But we will not stand to have our IP ripped off. We’ll use whatever weapons we have at our disposal. I don’t know that I can be more clear than that.
The Palm Pre was unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas and was a big hit. It appears Apple has targeted some features and aspects of Palm’s yet-unreleased Pre, which has a slide-out keyboard and a new operating system called webOS.
“Apple was not the first to do multi-touch,” Palm spokeswoman Lynn Fox told Reuters. She argued that multi-touch has been around for more than 20 years. “Palm has been building its own intellectual property portfolio for 15 years, and we will defend it vigorously, if necessary,” she added.
In separate comments to All Things Digital, she said: “We have long been recognized for our fundamental patents in the mobile space. If faced with legal action, we are confident that we have the tools necessary to defend ourselves.”
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