Palm shrugs off Apple patent threat

 

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By Stuart Turton

Posted on 12 Feb 2009 at 11:21

Palm chief executive Ed Colligan has suggested the company is ready for any legal battle Apple may choose to bring over touchscreen technology.

The Palm Pre was the undoubted star of this year's Consumer Electronic Show, but when an analyst suggested to Apple's interim boss Tim Cook that its touchscreen interface "emulated" that of the iPhone, Cook issued a thinly-veiled warning to its new challenger.

"I don't want to talk about any specific company... However, we will not stand for having our intellectual property ripped off and we'll use whatever weapons we have at our disposal. I don't know that I can be more clear than that," Cook claimed.

Speaking to investors, Colligan shrugged off the threat, claiming the resurgent Palm had more than enough patents in its locker to fight off Apple.

"We believe we're huge innovators and have been for a lot of years and that this product [Palm Pre] has an enormous number of innovations in it," he says.

"One of the things we've done over 15 years is build a very extensive patent portfolio in the mobile-computing space and the reason you do that is to have a defensive position in the marketplace.

"It's kind of like two little porcupines going around, and you don't want to touch each other because you might get stung. You peacefully coexist and everything's okay and we keep working together."

Quite whether Apple sees it the same way remains to be seen.