Embarrassingly for a company whose core business is software protection devices, Irvine, California-based Rainbow Technologies Inc is being sued by San Jose-based software asset management firm Globetrotter Software Inc for an infringement of a patent. Globetrotter claims that Rainbow is guilty of deliberate and willful patent infringement of 1995 US patent No 5,390,297, which covers network licensing. The company is asking the courts to require Rainbow, its distributors and its licensees to cease distribution and use of SentinalLM, and wants the court to grant treble damages and attorney fees. Globetrotter’s FlexLM software license manager is in use at 1,600 software publishers, including Compaq Computer Corp, Hewlett-Packard Co, Sun Microsystems Inc and Xerox Corp. Rainbow says Globetrotter recently acquired the patent from another company, and believes the suit is without merit. It will fight the lawsuit. Globetrotter filed a similar claim against Wind River Systems Inc in December 1997, and that claim was recently settled out of court. Wind River’s product incorporated technology originally owned by the Elan Computer Group of Mountain View, California, now owned by Rainbow. Wind River agreed to license the Globetrotter patents and said it wouldn’t use the Elan technology in its future products.
