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Novell Wins Patent Suit Brought By Action Technologies Case Against Novell GroupWise Task Feature Declared Invalid, Novell Continues to Market Leading Collaborative Product for Intranets With Full Functionality PROVO, Utah -- June 11, 1997 -- In a June 5, 1997, ruling in United States District Court, Northern District of California, Novell, Inc. won a summary judgement and was cleared of any patent infringement against Action Technologies, Inc. Action Technologies claimed in a 1995 filing that Novell's GroupWise™, an award-winning collaboration solution, violated Action's United States Patent Number 5,216,603 with its task feature. The GroupWise task feature enables users to assign electronic tasks to other individuals. According to Judge Vaughn R. Walker's written judgement, Novell "has proven by clear and convincing evidence" that the technology claimed by the '603 patent existed well before Action's patent filing, and Action's patent is therefore invalid. Novell is free to continue marketing and selling GroupWise with its full functionality. "Novell was confident that it would win this legal action," said Stewart Nelson, vice president and general manager of the Novell Applications Division. "We set out to show that Action did not have a justifiable patent case, and we succeeded. Now that we have resolved this lawsuit, we will continue to develop even more sophisticated, Web-enabled collaboration features for Novell GroupWise customers." GroupWise is Novell's premier collaboration product for intranets and is the industry's only expanded E- mail system to include full document management capabilities as part of a Universal Mailbox. The Universal Mailbox also gives users single-point access to personal calendaring, group scheduling, tasks, voice mail, faxes, documents, images and other message types both from the desktop and via the Internet using GroupWise WebAccess™. GroupWise WebAccess allows users to access the Universal Mailbox from any HTML-compliant Internet browser. Founded in 1983, Novell (NASDAQ: NOVL) is the world's leading provider of network software. The company offers a wide range of network solutions for distributed network, Internet, intranet and small- business markets. Novell education and technical support programs are the most comprehensive in the network computing industry. Information about Novell's complete range of products and services can be accessed on the World Wide Web at http://www.novell.com. Novell is a registered trademark, and GroupWise and GroupWise WebAccess are a trademark of Novell, Inc. All other registered trademarks and trademarks are the property of their respective holders.
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