Cellular phone development company Hop-On Inc. (OTCBB: HPNN) announced that the Central District Court of California has legally permitted the company to continue the use of its Graffiti Wireless trademark today, prompting a few share price spikes during the day until prices settled around .0130 a share, an 18 percent increase over Hop-On’s opening price.”The basic fact is now Hop-On can complete all outstanding contracts with the trademark, which was previously ordered by the court as illegal,” Peter Michaels, Hop-On’s CEO, told MN1’s Saul Albom in an exclusive interview today.
The story behind the litigation is relatively well-known; Hop-On and another company, Palmsource Inc., both claimed ownership of the brand name Graffiti Wireless several years ago, and the two companies have reportedly been duking it out over the ownership rights ever since.
Now, with this latest court victory, Hop-On claims it has the right to the Graffiti Wireless trademark.
“We spent a lot of money promoting our graffiti logo name and business,” Michaels said. “This allows us to protect our intellectual property with our trademark. Now we’ll have to litigate more … so we can keep the name.”
Normally, this sort of extensive defense posture would be very taxing on a company, but Michaels seemed bright and energetic during the interview.
“It’s exciting because we’re winning,” Michaels said. “We have such a strong case.”
But Hop-On isn’t finished yet. Palmsource apparently isn’t alone in taking Hop-On’s intellectual rights. Michaels told Albom that there were “other companies” guilty of taking advantage of his company – companies that were unfairly using technology that Michaels holds patents on.
“Palm isn’t the only one we’re litigating against,” Michaels said. “There’re other companies we’ll be filing complaints against in federal courts for violating our patents. The way I look at it, these patents are a great asset for our company.
“I think we’re estimating that one out of every 15 cell phones right now who have chargers are violating one of our design patents, and we are vigorously going after people who are infringing those patents,” Michaels continued. “And there’re other companies out there who are violating our design patent on our mp3 phone that has speakers on the sides of the cellphones and that look very similar – almost identical – to design patents we have. Some of these design patents are estimated to generate us between $10 and $20 million. That’s a substantial amount of money.”
Michaels was confident about pursuing these patents to the full extent of the law.
“I have unlimited resources to fight it,” Michaels said. “We could take on any major company, any major corporation. I have the best litigators in the country. We have guys signed on who don’t lose [cases.]”
However, Michaels wanted to make it clear that he wasn’t intent on focusing on his lawsuits or patents alone.
“We’re not patent trolls,” Michaels said. “But I have to protect our shareholders and I’ll go after folks or companies that are violating our patents.”
In fact, Michaels mentioned that his companies new text-to-win cell phone campaign – where users would text in to win up to $100,000 in a phone-only contest – was slated to start soon, and that Hop-On would soon introduce a phone to the U.S. market.
“We’re calling it the Chitter-Chatter,” Michaels said. “It’s a tracking phone for kids and adults. [Adults can use it] to track their children to see where they are.”
Michaels urged shareholders to keep an eye on their news in the coming months. A full recording of the interview is available in our podcasts section.
