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Sendo boss Hugh Brogan wants to avoid further lawsuits

Following the breakdown of talks between Sendo and Orange, Sendo has applied for a High Court injunction to prevent sales of the smartphone. And this will very probably apply to anybody else who sells the SPV - and the "Tanager" based SPV-x - in any country in the world.

Brogan has emphasised that he does not want lawsuits. "We'd rather resolve things amicably," he said, "But we have a patent on the circuit board in the SPV, and it has been applied for in many jurisdictions," he told NewsWireless.Net in an exclusive interview this afternoon. "We will defend our intellectual property in any jurisdiction where we can't come to amicable arrangements."

Talks with Orange have been going on since Sendo sued Microsoft.

"Essentially, the design of circuit board in the Sendo phone reduces both cost and size of the board; it's a novel invention, and it has been patented," Brogan said. "The board in the SPV breaches that patent, according to our patent agent."

This could easily frighten the people Microsoft is most anxious to woo; the big mobile phone operators on one hand, and big corporates considering using Microsoft smartphone designs on the other.

That, of course, would be Sendo's plan. But, according to some, it might backfire on Sendo. "Sendo is launching its own Series 60 smartphone; so it's a difficult to see this paying dividends. It might frighten other operators," commented Andy Buss at Canalys.

Brogan's view is simpler: "If you have intellectual property and you don't take steps to defend it, in court if necessary, then you can lose it," he said. "We asked Orange to withdraw it, they refused. We then made a commercial proposal, which they haven't responded to; as a consequence of that, we have no choice but to take legal action."

The action is bound to cause speculation about whether a similar "commercial proposal" might have been made to another carrier, T-Mobile - which recently announced that it was postponing the launch of the Tanager in the US. No reason was give for the delay apart from "concerns about reliability."

Sources close to Brogan have indicated, however, that while he doesn't rule out discussions of this nature with other carriers in other jurisdictions, there have been no such negotiations with T-Mobile - so far.

But the blow to Microsoft could be severe. Its credibility in the smartphone market is still to be established, while its rival, Symbian, is being praised for getting things right. Just at the point where several big carriers are being asked to take it seriously, a reminder of the lawsuit and a suggestion that there are genuine legal risks involved in going the Redmond way, is not going to help.

Brogan certainly appears to think this is an issue: "When we filed our original complaints against Microsoft, we mentioned that one of the problems was that changes required for specific operators were not supported by Microsoft," he said.

These days, phone operators have special services they want to sell to users, and they need a phone which supports these network-specific extras. "We had issues about making a carrier grade product, and getting specific changes for specific operators," said Brogan today. "They weren't done."

The "Tanager" successor to the SPV is slightly different, but Brogan expects to discover that it breaches the same patent. "We haven't seen the new phone yet, but we will be getting one and showing it to our patent agent; and if it does breach the patent, we will defend it."