Have Apple lawyers targeted Palm as a potential target for patent-infringment lawsuits? Concerns sent shares of the Palm Pre handset slipping Tuesday.
Palm shares were down $0.40 as of 1:22 p.m. Eastern. Apple’s stock was up $0.86.
Worries were renewed earlier today on word Apple had been granted a patent covering a “touch screen device, method, and graphical user interface for determining commands by applying heuristics,” according to the Wall Street Journal’s AllThingsD.
The patent “includes features that sound a lot like those included in the Palm Pre,” noted Barron’s.
“I asked Palm point blank whether they were prepared to defend using the same gestures as the iPhone; Palm assured me that their IP position is secure,” Avi Greengart, handset analyst for Current Analysis, told Cult of Mac.
Interim Apple CEO Tim Cook last week hinted the company would pursue litigation, telling analysts the Cupertino, Calif.-based firm “will not stand for having our IP ripped-off.”
Responding to Apple’s saber-rattling, Palm told reporters it was “confident” it could withstand a patent challenge, noting it owned several “fundamental” handset technologies.
Ed Sutherland is a veteran technology journalist who first heard of Apple when they grew on trees, Yahoo was run out of a Stanford dorm and Google was an unknown upstart. Since then, Sutherland has covered the whole technology landscape, concentrating on tracking the trends and figuring out the finances of large (and small) technology companies.
