Seven, Visto Cut Patent Deal

Seven Networks Inc. agreed to license patents from Visto Corp., settling a dispute between the companies over push e-mail patents.

In addition to the licensing agreement, the companies have settled all legal actions against each other. The two have been battling over patents for three years.

In late December, a court upheld an earlier jury decision that found that Seven had infringed on three Visto patents. But the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office had already made an initial ruling that one of the patents in question was invalid. At the time, Seven said that it expected the USPTO to make its final decision during the time it appealed the court ruling. Instead, Seven has worked with Visto to settle the matter.

Their dispute was one of many in the push e-mail market, an indication of the perceived potential for the industry.

The battle follows the high-profile case between Research In Motion Ltd. and NTP Inc. That suit threatened to shut down the popular BlackBerry push e-mail service used by executives and government workers but RIM ultimately settled with NTP.

Visto licenses patents from NTP.

Visto is also battling patent infringement suits against other push e-mail providers, including Good Technology, RIM and Microsoft Corp. Infowave Software Inc. was also the subject of an earlier patent suit from Visto but the company ultimately agreed to license Visto's software in 2004.