Damages doubled in Visto’s Seven case

A federal judge on Monday doubled the damages awarded to Visto in its patent suit against push e-mail competitor Seven and issued a permanent injunction against Seven to stop selling its infringing messaging software. The court, however, also granted an immediate stay of the injunction, pending Seven’s appeal to the circuit court.

U.S. District Judge for the eastern district of Texas T. John Ward more than doubled last April’s jury award of $3.6 million to $7.7 million plus attorney and court costs in a final ruling for Visto. Though the amount is small compared to the $612.5 million settlement Research in Motion paid out to NTP in a similar case in March, the threat of injunction still weighs heavily over the increasingly litigious mobile e-mail sector, where every company with a patent seems to be suing every other.

Seven said that its stay on the injunction will allow it to continue business as usual while it continues to challenge Visto’s patents before the U.S. Patent Office. That federal agency has already invalidated one of the four patents at issue in the Visto-Seven case, and Seven said it expects the Patent Office to hear the remaining three, either rejecting Visto’s intellectual property claims or narrowing their scope enough to nullify the lawsuit. Seven has also counter-sued Visto, claiming it is infringing on two of its own mobile e-mail patents. Trial on that case is set for June 2007.

“With a strong case on appeal, strong balance sheet, thriving business and our turn in court in June, we are well positioned to drive this dispute to resolution,” said Kent Thexton, executive chairman of Seven, in a statement.

Visto is taking the entire breadth of the mobile e-mail sector to court, filing lawsuits against RIM, Microsoft, Good Technology and Sproqit, yet it has also tried to protect itself from legal action by signing a licensing agreement with RIM’s agitator NTP. With RIM’s massive settlement under its belt, NTP is going after the next biggest player in the e-mail devices space, Palm. Meanwhile RIM is going after device maker Samsung for trademark infringement after it released a phone called the BlackJack similar to RIM’s BlackBerry Pearl. Lawsuits have spawned counter lawsuit and dozens of appeals for patent review.

Despite the legal cloud surrounding them, e-mail application providers don’t seem to be seeing a negative effect on their business. Even with an injunction hanging over its head, Seven signed a deal with Sprint to power its consumer push e-mail platform.