BY MATT VINCENT
Twice within a five-week span, Acticon Technologies (www.acticontech.com) announced that its parent company, General Patent Corporation International (GPCI; www.generalpatent.com), had reached settlements with vendors concerning Acticon’s smart-connector patents.
In March, GPCI announced a settlement with Macally Peripherals (www.macally.com). “We are happy to have settled with Macally,” says Paul Lerner, GPCI’s senior vice president and general counsel, adding that the company still intended to go after other defendants named in the lawsuit it filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.
That announcement came a little more than a month after GPCI announced a settlement with Margi Systems (www.margi.com), which was named in the same lawsuit as Macally. Under the terms of that settlement, Margi became a licensee of Acticon’s smart-connector technology.
Acticon’s smart-connector patents cover specific aspects of personal-computer cards and other smart-connector devices used in mobile-computer communications, networking, and instrumentation control, the company says.
GPCI says it has successfully represented Acticon in 25 lawsuits and more than 130 licensing transactions related to these patents. Acticon posts a list of licensees on its Web site that spans, literally, from AboCom Systems to Zoom Telephonics.
