Visto Turns On Good

By DAVID SIMS

TMCnet CRM Alert Columnist

Visto Corporation, a push e-mail vendor, announced today that it has filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Good Technology.

In the claim, Visto alleges that various Good Technology products, including GoodLink, their push e-mail service, infringe on the patents that Visto has held for the past nine years. The suit seeks a permanent injunction against GoodLink and Good's other infringing technology, which can power several mobile devices including the Palm Treo, HP's iPAQ hw6500, and the Motorola MPx220, among others. The suit also seeks monetary damages.

The suit, which alleges that Good's products and services infringe on multiple patents held by Visto, was filed in the U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Texas.

Brian A. Bogosian, Visto Chairman, CEO and President called his company "a strong player in the mobile e-mail market," adding that while there are "justifiable marketplace jitters about whether BlackBerry service will be shut down by a federal court next month," with Visto, "all users, including BlackBerry users, have a safe harbor alternative to RIM that offers protection from intellectual property risks."

Individual and business subscribers can get Visto Mobile service through their mobile phone carrier.

Good Technology Inc. and Visto Corp. are both licensed partners of NTP Inc. a small company which does little more than hold patents and which has the patent at the heart of the BlackBerry case.

Bogosian recently told Reuters that this wasn't about cashing in on the BlackBerry proceedings. "RIM barely scratches the surface. We don't need any of their customers," he said. "They make a nice little device, and they have a good service. But our whole proposition is to make available a service on the device of your choice. That is a quantum leap ahead of what people have had as a choice up until now."

Daniel Mendez, Visto's Senior Vice President, created the company in 1996. Visto currently holds 25 patents, including those related to mobile e-mail and data access systems, and has 57 patents pending.

Visto developed and secured the patents at issue in the lawsuit against Good, specifically:

-- U.S. Patent No. 5,961,590 titled, "System And Method For Synchronizing Electronic Mail Between A Client Site And A Central Site"

-- U.S. Patent No. 6,085,192 titled, "System And Method For Securely Synchronizing Multiple Copies Of A Workspace Element In A Network"

-- U.S. Patent No. 6,708,221 titled, "System And Method For Globally And Securely Accessing Unified Information In A Computer Network"

-- U.S. Patent No. 6,151,606 titled, "System And Method For Using A Workspace Data Manager To Access, Manipulate And Synchronize Network Data"

David Sims is contributing editor for TMCnet. For more articles please visit David Sims' columnist page.

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