Annoncés avec quelques jours d’intervalles (voir nos articles sur le Nook et l’Alex) et un concept similaire – deux écrans, l’un en papier électronique pour la lecture et l’autre, LCD et tactile pour la navigation -… Le Nook et l’Alex semblaient avoir les même parents.

Il n’aura fallu que quelques semaines pour que ces similitudes trouvent une explication : Spring Design porte plainte contre Barnes&Noble pour violation de brevets et des accords de confidentialité signés entre les deux parties. En effet, les deux entreprises étaient en négociation depuis le début de l’année autour d’un projet de lecteur de livres électroniques. La jeune start-up développe l’Alex depuis 2006 et dispose d’un brevet sur sa technologie Duet Navigator™. B&N se serait un peu trop inspirée de de l’Alex, profitant des différents mails et réunions, durant lesquels ses cadres ont récupéré des informations pour développer leur propre reader.

Pour Eric Kmiec, vice-président des ventes et du marketing chez Spring Design, la détermination de son entreprise pour révolutionner le livre électronique reste intacte. Cependant, “la résolution de ce litige leur permettrait de continuer à travailler sur le marché en pleine croissance du livre électronique, en proposant une expérience utilisateur renouvelée, pour créer un nouveau plaisir dans la lecture”. Cette affaire va faire grand bruit dans le monde du livre électronique. On attend la réponse de B&N avec impatience.

Spring Design Files Lawsuit against Barnes & Noble : Nook Violates Alex Intellectual Property

CUPERTINO, CA – November 2, 2009 – Spring Design today filed a lawsuit to protect its Alex™ e-book intellectual property. The lawsuit asserts Barnes & Noble misappropriated trade secrets and violated the parties’ non-disclosure agreement when it copied Alex’ features into its recently announced Nook e-book.

“Spring Design unfortunately had to take the appropriate action to protect its intellectual property rights,” said Spring Design Vice President of Sales and Marketing, Eric Kmiec. “We showed the Alex e-book design to Barnes & Noble in good faith with the intention of working together to provide a superior dual screen e-book to the market.”

Spring Design first developed and began filing patents on its Alex e-book, an innovative dual screen, Android-based e-book back in 2006. Since the beginning of 2009 Spring and Barnes & Noble worked within a non-disclosure agreement, including many meetings, emails and conference calls with executives ranging up to the president of Barnes and Noble.com, discussing confidential information regarding the features, functionality and capabilities of Alex. Throughout, Barnes & Noble’s marketing and technical executives extolled Alex’s “innovative” features, never mentioning their use of those features until the public disclosure of the Nook.

Alex, with its unique Duet Navigator™, provides the capability for interaction and navigation techniques of the two screens and furthermore utilizes the capabilities of Android to enhance the reader’s experience by supporting interactive access to the Internet for references and links. As the first in the market to offer an e-book with full Internet browsing while reading and with easy navigational control via its touch screen, Alex is well-positioned to offer the most dynamic and powerful reading device in the market.

Spring Design is focused at working strategically with book store partners to jointly develop the market and revolutionize e-book with interactive multi-media open Internet access. “It is our desire to resolve this matter so that we can move forward together to expand and grow this e-book market with enriched user experience, bringing readers to a new level of reading enjoyment,” said Eric Kmiec.

About Spring Design:
Spring Design, founded in 2006, delivers innovative e-reader solutions and products to the e-book market, offering overall “Link Notes”, a content authoring and multi-media publishing tool as add on editions to original text. Spring Design is located in Cupertino, California with engineering offices in Taiwan and China. Spring Design pioneered its patent-pending dual screen design with Duet Navigator™ capability in 2006, and has been working with major book stores, newspapers and publishers over the last two years, sharing the vision and the capabilities of the dual screen device. Spring Design’s innovative patented technologies incorporate the seamless interaction of dual display and multi-online access in a single device, benefiting and leveraging the technology and resources of the Web to enhance the reading experience with open Internet access.