SPSS Settles Trademark Case

MR software giant SPSS has announced that it has settled its trademark case with company founder Norman Nie over use of its name. The company is due to put its $1.2 billion acquisition by IBM to shareholders' vote this Friday, while the litigation was due to come to trial the following Monday.

Financial terms of the settlement were not disclosed but Peter Baugher, an attorney for co-founder Norman Nie, said that Nie will transfer ownership of the mark to SPSS.

SPSS originated as an acronym for Statistical Package for the Social Sciences. Earlier this year the company introduced a new four-letter acronym for its entire software portfolio, PASW - partly reflecting its focus on the idea of predictive analytics, prominent in its marketing for some time, but also serving to dilute the importance of the original abbreviation.

Neither Nie, 66, or SPSS would comment further on the settlement: IBM has also declined to do so. Nie created the forerunner of the software in the 1960s with two friends including 'Tex' Hull, while a graduate student at Stanford University. The two formed a separate company called SPSS in 1975 and registered themselves as owners of the SPSS trademark, which was then used by the company under an exclusive, perpetual, worldwide, royalty-free license. Nie was CEO until 1992, and then Chairman. In 2007 the company reportedly asked Nie and Hull to transfer ownership of the trademark to them, offering a nominal $10 for it: Nie and Hull are then then said to have asked for around $20 million, at which SPSS filed a lawsuit in federal court to stop them from enforcing any rights under the license agreement.

Nie and Hull countered in January 2008 with claims that SPSS was infringing their trademark rights; Hull later assigned his claims to Nie and has dropped out of the case.

During the IBM negotiations, in June, the computer giant mooted a reduction of the offer price if the suit was still ongoing, although this was rejected by SPSS, which agreed to address the litigation promptly: last week it apparently made Nie a new offer, which it seems safe to speculate was somewhere between ten dollars and twenty million...

Web sites: www.spss.com and www.ibm.com .

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.