3Com’s Palm Computing, Inc. Wins Preliminary Injunction Against Olivetti Office USA, CompanionLink
SAN JOSE, Calif. — August 12, 1999 — 3Com Corporation (NASDAQ: COMS) today announced that on August 10, 1999, the United States District Court for the Northern District of California granted Palm Computing, Inc.'s Motion for Preliminary Injunction against further distribution, sale, import or export of Olivetti Office USA's "Royal daVinci" palm-size PDA, and the daVinci OS Software Development Kit (SDK), distributed by CompanionLink Software, Inc.
Specifically, the Preliminary Injunction prohibits Olivetti and CompanionLink "from directly or indirectly copying, importing, exporting, distributing, or selling in any medium (certain portions of the) copyrighted Palm OS(TM) source code, or object code, or any software derived therefrom." The injunction is to remain in effect pending the outcome of the lawsuit.
Alan Kessler, president of Palm Computing, commented, "Palm's primary objective in this is to protect the integrity of our platform. We are gratified that the courts in both the United States and Hong Kong have acted quickly to protect Palm's copyrights. Palm intends vigilantly to enforce our intellectual property rights against infringement or misappropriation; this benefits the investment in Palm's platform and the products made by Palm's many licensees, over 18,000 Palm development partners, strategic alliance partners, employees, shareholders and our four million plus customers."
In its ruling, the Court noted that Palm had "made a showing of likelihood of success on the merits" that portions of the copyrighted Palm OS operating system software were copied verbatim in the daVinci products, in violation of the United States copyright laws. The Court issued the Preliminary Injunction less than three weeks after Palm filed its copyright infringement action against Olivetti and CompanionLink on July 22, 1999, and obtained a Temporary Restraining Order on July 23, 1999.
Palm also initiated a copyright infringement action in Hong Kong on July 21, 1999, against Echolink Design Ltd., the company responsible for developing the operating system software contained in the daVinci products. The High Court of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region issued an order the same day restraining Echlin from further copying, distribution, sale, import or export of Palm Operating System source code or Echolink's "NEXUS OS" source code, which Palm maintains infringes its copyrights.
Palm Computing, Inc., a 3Com company, is the leading provider of handheld information management solutions, including the best-selling Palm III, Palm V and Palm VII series of connected organizers. The Palm Computing platform is the industry standard for information management and is the open foundation for the market-leading connected organizers from Palm Computing as well as products from Palm Computing's strategic partners such as IBM, QUALCOMM, Franklin Covey and Symbol Technologies. Palm Computing products let people carry their most critical personal and business information in their pockets, and access it at any time, anywhere. For more information, please visit www.palm.com.
CONTACT:
3Com Corporation
Barbara Woolf, 408/326-1375
Barbara_Woolf@3com.com
or
Coltrin & Associates
Brad Leone, 650/373-2005
Brad_Leone@Coltrin.com