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Sprint Along for the Ride in Civil Suit

The PDF Problem
Palm, the maker of the Pre and Pixi, has been sued by Artifex Software Inc. because of alleged copyright infringement on the part of Palm, according to a press release on December 2 2009. Palm has allegedly stolen technology from Artifex by copying and distributing the Artifex proprietary muPDF technology, which is a high performance PDF rendering engine. Artifex is known for developing the family of interpreters known as the Ghostscript.

The suit, which was filed in the United States District Court of Northern California, alleges Palm “improperly integrated muPDF into the Palm Pre’s “PDF viewer” application without Artifex’s approval.” This would make the infringement as wide spread as the Palm Pre itself as the viewer was shipped with every single Palm Pre shipped since June 2009.

Even though Palm admits to using the software, as is evidenced by their own documentation of muPDF’s inclusion in the PDF app as the sole rendering engine for the viewer, they did not obtain a proper license or comply with the terms of the GPL. And as such, as stated within the press release located on Artifex’s website:

Palm’s intentional refusal to comply with the terms of the GPL means that Palm willfully copied and distributed muPDF without authorization, and any and all such copies infringe Artifex’s exclusive copyright.

Miles Jones, the president of Artifex Software says because so many different companies actually legally pay for licensing under normal circumstances…

muPDF is an outstanding technical choice for a lightweight, high-performance PDF renderer. Artifex makes the choice simple for those who copy Artifex software for distribution: Comply with the terms of the GPL, sign an OEM license agreement with Artifex, or do not distribute our software. We have an obligation to protect our copyrights for ourselves, for our customers, and for every member of the open source community.”

The Civil Suit with Sprint
Palm and Sprint/Nextel are being sued by Jason Standiford, from San Francisco in the United States District Court of Northern California, as he alleges they caused him to lose most of his personal and private data from his phone after its replacement. Jason is hoping to turn this into a civil suit, as apparently this is not the only case of data loss happening.

Since November, Palm and Sprint have said they “are trying to solve problems some users have had moving data from one Palm webOS device to another, a task that has caused some to lose contacts and calendar entries, according to blogs and online user comments.” The statement refers to the customers having been writing many comments in response to a post on Pre Central, a site dedicated to Palm Pre, as to the depth of the data loss.

What is supposed to happen is the users are supposed to be able to back up all of their data on the Palm Profile, a cloud based, password protected web page, where it is stored, as well as a copy stored on the Palm servers, and when the user needs to reboot or replace the webOS service, they are supposed to use synchronization to recover their data to the new device. This, however, is sadly not the case Jason’s Pre.

Jason has filed a civil suit stating he lost all but 4 contacts out of hundreds, all but 3 memos and lost his bookmarks completely. Ironically, two of the numbers recovered after synchronizing were Sprint Customer Service numbers. The other two numbers recovered were recently added to the cloud profile. The suit alleges that when he returned to the store:

Returning to the Sprint store the next day, he found they still had his old phone and asked them to restore the data stored on it, but the attempt failed and deleted all the data on that device.

Sprint later tried again to restore the data to the new phone and was able to produce some of it, but not all, the suit says.

The data on the defective Pre was the only backup of Standiford’s original information because Palm always overwrites the previous day’s backup, the suit alleges

The complaint itself names Palm, Sprint and 50 others, known as “Does,” as they are not known to the Plaintiff, and was files and certified as a class action lawsuit on behalf of all Palm Pre,Pixi and webOS users, and the group of people who have lost data in particular. The suit is asking for a monetary award.

And the Verdict Is?
When there is one in either of the two cases, we will be sure to let you know. But as of right now, I have to wonder. with what Palm did with syncing to the iTunes and iPhones and how Palm completely ignored the talking to they received as to leaving the syncing alone, and now with these law suits and what they re claiming…

What on Earth is Palm thinking? They don’t have to follow the law? Or they can just do whatever they want and get away with it? I know, with my very first post here on Youserbase, I applauded Palm for their actions as they stood up to Apple, but now I am left thinking maybe I was premature in my writings. It is one thing to playfully break a few rules, but it is another entirely to outright steal someone elses product and use it to make yours better!. Just pay for the license already! With as much money Palm is pulling in, why haven’t they bought one yet? Is it just an oversight, or did Palm steal it outright?

And as for the civil suit, because the technology is Palm’s alone, I think Sprint should not have been named in the suit, as they are only the vehicle in which the Palm Pre and Pixi are sold. They really have nothing to do with the Palm Profile, do they? Yet they did try to help recover the data that was lost.

What do the readers think about all of this? What is your take o the situations? Drop a comment and let us know…

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