Xerox Shifts Steenburgh to iGen3

Just as Xerox Corp. prepares a major expansion of its e-services business, the Stamford, Conn., copier and printer giant has reassigned the executive put in charge of the effort.

On Thursday, Xerox shifted Frank Steenburgh, a corporate

officer and the senior vice president and worldwide general manager of its recently established e-Services Business, to head up the marketing efforts of the companys DocuColor iGen3 Digital Production Press, a product the com-pany is counting on generating big revenues when it ships next summer. The iGen3 is a super fast 100ppm digital press with an output of 8 bits per pixel at 600 dpi.

Xerox has not named a successor for Steenburgh, a 28-year Xerox veteran, who headed the companys $3 billion Xerox Worldwide Graphic Arts Industry Business before taking on the e-Services helm when the division was launched in February. That expertise is exactly what Xerox is looking to tap to help the company successfully market the iGen3, which was officially announced in Sept., a company official told eWEEK on Thursday.

In separate news, in what has been an economically challenging year for Xerox, the com-pany got some good news on Monday. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, in Wash-ington, reversed a decision by a lower court that dismissed a patent infringement suit brought against Palm Inc., in 1997 by Xerox. In the suit, which was dismissed in June 2000, Xerox alleges that the handheld computer maker and software developers single-stroke Graffiti handwriting rec-ognition software violates a patent for a similar Xerox technology called Unistrokes, which was in-vented in Xeroxs famed Palo Alto Research Center.

The case will now continue in U.S. District Court, in Rochester, N.Y.