A virtually unknown handheld developer, Kyhber Systems Inc has filed a patent infringement suit against some of the big guns of the Windows CE handheld industry, including Hewlett-Packard, Casio and Philips. The suit, filed last week in the Federal District Court in Boston, alleges that electronic organizers from those companies, as well as Everex and Uniden, infringe a patent held by Kyhber relating to the storage and retrieval of text and audio files on PDAs.
The specific products alleged to infringe the Khyber patent are Casio’s Cassiopeia, Everex Systems’ Freestyle, Hewlett-Packard’s Jornado, Philips Electronics’ Nino and Uniden’s Unipro. In a statement, Kybher’s president said, With years of research and development effort, Khyber has created new form-and-function technology for use in portable Internet appliances. We have been heartened to see the market adopt our technologies. For a small company like us, however, it is unfair that after making such a substantial investment, we are being pushed out by the giants in the field. The Ohio-based company is looking for injunctive relief as well as damages.
Recently both Philips and Everex announced that they would stop making the CE-based organizers named in the suit. However, there is no suggestion that this is because of possible legal action, rather a reflection of the sorry state of the CE handheld market. Khyber is developing its own product, the Pocket Partner unit, which is designed to serve as a wireless phone, organizer and an internet appliance.
