22 Companies Sued Over Wi-Fi Patents

Newer Guy writes "Wi-LAN, another patent holding company, has sued 22 companies that make or sell wireless routers. Defendants include Apple. Atheros, Belkin, Best Buy, Buffalo, Dell, HP, Intel, and Lenovo. Wi-LAN has a portfolio of more than 280 issued or pending patents." Of course the two patent suits were filed in Marshall, Texas.

Comments

Who's missing?

[644bd346996]

Another story more notable for what's missing than for what's included.

Cisco (who also owns Linksys) is missing from the list of companies, despite being one of the biggest players in the wi-fi market. If they have already licensed the patents in question, that is a very important detail that should be explored.

On the other hand, if Cisco has also been ignoring those patents, and the patent troll in question is not attacking Cisco, there is probably a very interesting reason.

Re:Who's missing?

[jrumney]

Actually, these guys seem to have genuinely invented the work they hold the patents for, though they were working for the University of Calgary at the time - does the University allow its employees to hold the IP for inventions made in the course of their University funded research through private holding companies? If I was a Canadian taxpayer, I'm not sure I'd be happy about that.

Re:Who's missing?

[BenVis]

articles written by journalists are complex and potentially difficult to read! Seriously. Pick up a copy of the New Yorker magazine. Maybe you don't like their slant, or you think people from New York are snooty. Whatever. Grab a copy and read one of the full-length articles. Well, make sure you've got a good hour, those things are long. After regularly reading those for a few years, your typical AP article feels like a summary of what a journalist would write, minus most of the due diligence.

Re:Who's missing?

[Rudisaurus]

I can confirm the PP -- I was around when Wi-LAN floated their IPO in the mid-90's. A fairly prescient friend of mine urged me and my co-workers to invest in the company because they had both patented and demonstrated their technology by that point and the IEEE was evaluating their protocol for use as a standard. I didn't invest in the IPO, although a few of my colleagues did, so I missed out on the 40-times share price increase as Wi-LAN rode the dot-com bubble to an absolutely dizzying height before collapsing back to their original value along with everyone else when the bubble burst.

The University of Calgary has a wholly-owned company called University Technologies International (UTI) which exists to assist academics in obtaining patents, licensing new technologies, and attracting the attention of investors for seed money for start-ups -- something I would imagine pretty much any university does, these days.

Why now?

[popo]

If I were the judge I would throw this case out.

The onus of protecting rights should be on the holder of the rights.

The strategy of patent holders must not be to "lay dormant" allowing numerous companies to infringe for a decade, and then when the market reaches critical mass, appear from the shadows with lawsuits.

We've all seen this happen before of course, but in other areas of intellectual property, (Trademarks for example) it is the responsibility to prevent the mark from becoming 'commonly used'. Once it does, a trademark holder can lose the rights to the mark. There are many famous examples of this.

Re:And again

[griffjon]

That seems like a poor choice of defendants. Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't you first want to bully a small fry without deep pockets and get a judgment supporting your claim, *then* go after the big companies with lawyers on retainers and deep deep pockets?

Best Buy?!?

[eyrieowl]

I must confess to being confused by that one. I understand (and abhor patent trolls) suing the manufacturers for not licensing the technology, but the storefront? Just going after someone with deep-pockets, or what? It's not actually a tenant of US law that you, as a seller, have to verify that all your wares are correctly licensed with clear patents/copyrights is it? How could a store ever be sure that all the electronic components in, say, the computers it sells are dispute-free?

Re:And again

[PFI_Optix]

It's not Texas, it's Marshall. They don't sue in Dallas or Austin or Houston or Lubbock or Longview or Lufkin...they always sue in Marshall. I'm a native Texan who has lived 30 years within a reasonable distance from Marshall, and all that town has going for it is ETBU and a rather attractive holiday scene around their historic courthouse. I must assume that building houses a court very friendly to the patent trolls, probably someone ignorant of technology enough to not recognize obviousness and prior art in the tech sector. They found a court that consistently supports them, and keep coming back.

Re:Missing the point of patents

[zippthorne]

"allow the technology to be developed."

Incorrect. The purpose of patents is to encourage inventors to publish their ideas. That can help spur additional development, but it also ensures that technology is not lost if the inventor goes out of business or buys a farm.