Hewlett Packard (HP, Houston, TX) filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Gateway Inc. (Poway, CA) alleging its rival refused to pay licensing fees on six HP patented designs. Alleged culprits included laptop hinges, keyboards that require passwords — even the cursor that points to icons on a computer's video display.
According to HP attorneys who filed in San Diego federal court, Gateway paid licensing fees from 1994 to 1999 to Compaq Computer Corp., which HP acquired in 2001. After the first licensing agreement expired in 1999, Gateway kept using patented designs, but did not pay for them. Some of the patent infringement claims in HP's lawsuit involve eMachines Inc., which Gateway acquired March 11.
HP, which was suing for attorneys fees and back payment on licensing fees, would not say how much Gateway allegedly owed, but an award could be in the tens of millions of dollars. HP is asking the court to award triple damages, "in view of the reckless, willful and deliberate nature of Gateway's infringement," according to court records. The lawsuit is one of the first to come out of HP's intellectual property licensing division, which was formed last year.
