MONSEY, N.Y., November 4, 1997 - General Patent Corporation (GPC) has reached a settlement with GVC Technologies, dba Maxtech Corp., of Cerritos, California and Archtek America Corp. of City of Industry, California in a patent infringement suit brought by GPC in May 1997 against seven leading modem manufacturers. The suit was brought to enforce four of GPC's patents which cover specific aspects of PCMCIA devices, PC card modems and other computer communications devices. As part of the settlement, Maxtech and Archtek agreed to license GPC's patents. Terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
"We are pleased to execute a licensing agreement with Maxtech and Archtek," said Alexander Poltorak, Ph.D., GPC's chairman and CEO. "With reasonable royalty rates we are offering to the manufacturers, we hope to see more and more modem vendors joining the ranks of our licensees," he added.
Christopher Marchese of Fish & Richardson, counsel for GPC, said, "We are negotiating with many other companies to take licenses under GPC's patents."
The patents include U.S. Patent Nos. 4,543,450 ("Integrated Connector and Modem"); 4,603,320 ("Connector Interface"); 4,686,506 ("Multiple Connector Interface"); and 4,972,470 ("Programmable Connector").
Dr. Poltorak also said that IBM recently settled with GPC while additional litigation was pending in New York against U.S. Robotics, now part of 3Com, and in California against four defendants: Hayes Microcomputer Products of Norcross, Georgia; Boca Research, Inc. of Boca Raton, Florida; Xircom, Inc. of Thousand Oaks, California; and New Media Corp. of Irvine, California.