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visorcentral.com >> Stories >> Business
NCR sues Palm & Handspring


Thu Mar 15, 2001 - 2:10 PM EST - By James Hromadka

According to this Reuters article, NCR is suing Palm and Handspring for alleged patent violations on two of NCR's patents.
Here is the abstract for the 1987 US Patent 4,634,845:

A system including a portable personal terminal which may be used for handling a wide variety of financial, shopping, and other transactions. The personal terminal is credit-card sized, is intelligent, includes a plurality of transaction totals and is constructed to be user friendly. An interface module is used to couple the terminal to other systems for on line uses.

I am by no means a lawyer and couldn't find the other patent, but this one seems geared to financial transactions, although the Summary of the Invention says that it is also for "certain personal activities of a user of the system." Since the patent mentions "credit-card sized," I wonder why NCR didn't go after the REXX (oh wait, nevermind). Out-of-the-box, Palm and Handspring computers don't do financial transactions (except maybe the Palm VII).

Thanks to rtalain for the news. Discuss the lawsuit here.

Update: PDA Buzz found the other patent, it's 4,689,478. It looks like almost the same thing.