SEVEN Releases Statement in Recent Visto Verdict
April 30th, 2006
The jury in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas returned a verdict after five hours in the ongoing patent litigation between SEVEN and Visto Corporation. Visto Corporation originally sought damages in excess of $12 million for nearly 200 claims from six patents. At trial the jury found that only five claims from three patents were infringed, and awarded damages of $3.6 million. In a separate proceeding at the US PTO, two of those claims stand rejected and are awaiting final office actions.
We are clearly disappointed with the verdict; however we are grateful for the limited nature of the damages and look forward to the next phase of the litigation and the outcome of the PTO’s re-examination proceedings. While this is the first step in a long process, our primary objective is to protect the interests of our customers and their ability to continue to use SEVEN’s innovative real-time mobile email solution. We believe minor alterations of the software will avoid the claims in the future, with no disruption to our customers or the user experience.
In a separate and ongoing lawsuit, SEVEN countersued Visto Corporation in August of 2005 in the same court for the infringement of two of its mobile email patents which predate the Visto patents. Trial in this matter is set for June 2007. Visto Corporation is also embroiled in lawsuits it brought with many suppliers of mobile information technologies including Microsoft, Good, Smartner, and Sproquit.
