Data General Corp says its lawyers are coming to the end of the discovery period in its 1994 patent infringement lawsuit launched against IBM Corp back in 1994, which means a court appearance could be in the offing. DG says IBM used its IP in developing AS/400 servers and S/390 mainframes. Companies usually settle these claims out of court. IBM recently settled a long-standing dispute with Novell Inc which it accused of using IBM patented techniques in some forms of WordPerfect. Novell paid an undisclosed amount to IBM to settle and the two agreed to cross- license intellectual property relating to around 50 other unspecified patents.
