Apple to license Access patents

Apple has agreed to license parts of Japanese mobile software company Access’s patent portfolio, in a deal reported to be worth $10 million.

Access acquired a number of patents created by the now defunct smartphone-maker Palm and its subsidiary PalmSource, when it bought Palm in 2005.

Some of the patents under the deal with Apple were once owned by Bell Communications Research (now Telcordia, an Ericsson subsidiary) and Geoworks, according to a statement published on the Access website.

In the 1990s, Palm developed the mobile device operating system Palm OS for personal digital assistants, producing devices including the PalmPilot Professional. Hewlett-Packard acquired Palm in 2010, and announced it would discontinue its products and services in 2011.

According to a 2007 email exchange between former Apple chief executive Steve Jobs and former Palm boss Ed Colligan, which was posted on 9to5mac.com, Apple’s deal with Access is a change of heart on Apple’s part. In the exchange Jobs described Palm’s patents as “not that great”.

Kathleen Fox Murphy, senior counsel at Taylor Wessing LLP, said that although little information has emerged about the deal, “one factor that will be borne in mind by companies deciding whether or not take a licence is the amount that is being sought by the patentee for the licence versus the cost, in terms of time and money, in litigating over validity or infringement of the patents”.

“A company will weigh up a lot of factors and will take the licence if, overall, it makes commercial or strategic sense,” she said.

“Generally, a company that licenses a patent portfolio is either getting a licence to some useful technology, or it is avoiding having to spend time and money on patent infringement or validity actions, or it’s a mixture of both those things,” she continued.

Fox Murphy said: “We don’t have any commercial information as to Apple’s position, in particular.”

The licensing agreement posted by Access values the deal at 1 billion yen.