Palm on Friday said it would appeal a court ruling in favor of Xerox in a case over a patent for handwriting recognition software.
"We assert that the Graffiti handwriting technology does not infringe the Xerox patent and that Palm has strong arguments to support its defense," Eric Benhamou, Palm's chairman and chief executive said.
Xerox (XRX) said on Thursday that it had won a patent infringement suit against 3Com (COMS) and Palm (PALM) over the Graffiti product.
Xerox had sued U.S. Robotics, which was later acquired by 3Com, in April 1997, claiming that the handwriting recognition technology marketed as Graffiti and used on Palm handheld devices infringed a patent Xerox received in 1997.
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Pay up to stay up: NTT DoCoMo said that it would pay $380 million for new shares in AT&T Wireless Services in order to maintain its 16 percent stake in the U.S. mobile operator.
DoCoMo will buy 26.6 million shares in AT&T Wireless (AWE) at $14.28 per share when AT&T Wireless issues new shares to finance a deal to buy TeleCorp PCS (TLCP).
AT&T Wireless, the third-largest U.S. wireless carrier, got a green light from antitrust regulators a day earlier to go ahead with its acquisition of TeleCorp, which will boost its coverage in the southern and midwestern regions in the United States.
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Doom 'n' gloom: The U.S. economy turned in its weakest performance in a decade in the third quarter, shrinking at an annual rate of 1.3 percent, an even bigger drop than the government previously estimated.
The revised reading of gross domestic product released by the Commerce Department on Friday showed that consumers were frugal, companies sharply cut investment and businesses slashed excess stocks of unsold goods -- all factors contributing to the dismal showing in the July-September quarter.
The government previously estimated that the economy contracted at a rate of 1.1 percent in the third quarter and its initial estimate pegged the decline at a 0.4 percent rate.
The revised 1.3 percent rate of decline was based on more complete data and marked the weakest performance since the economy contracted at a rate of 2 percent in the first quarter of 1991, when the country was suffering through its last recession.
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Bonding with Microsoft: South Korean telecoms giant KT said that Microsoft will buy $500 million in bonds that can later be converted into a small equity stake, though Argentina's problems would briefly delay a final contract.
Analysts say that Microsoft will be able to tap into KT's 3.7 million subscribers of high-speed Internet services but added that KT's recent bond issue plans had stirred investor concern about share oversupply.
Officials said KT (KTC) and Microsoft (MSFT) have agreed on the terms of the bond with warrants issue except for some conditions that need adjusting in light of the Argentine financial crisis.
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French telco slapped: European Union antitrust regulators accused Wanadoo Interactive Friday of trying to price the competition out of existence, and warned phone companies in other countries against trying the same.
The European Commission said it had notified Wanadoo of its suspicions that the Pack X-Tense and Wanadoo high-speed asymmetric digital subscriber line services, or ADSL, were being sold below cost, largely because of breaks it got from parent France Telecom on intermediate services.
Wanadoo chief executive Nicolas Dufourcq said he was "very surprised" by the EU's decision to investigate the company's pricing, which he said was in line with competitors in France and neighboring countries.
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Phone boxes unprofitable: The mobile phone craze has spelled doom for thousands of Britain's red phone boxes.
Growing popularity of mobile phones in the last two years has led to a 37 percent drop in calls from phone boxes, BT Group PLC (BTY) said on Friday.
The former phone monopoly said 30,000 of the country's 141,000 phone boxes were not paying their way.
It now plans to review all of the loss-making phone boxes and expects to get rid of about half of them. But those losing money in places where there are no other public phones nearby, such as in villages, will stay, BT said.
AP and Reuters contributed to this report.
