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

Good!

[Reality Master 201]

Maybe if enough scumbag IP holding companies extort enough money out of big corporations, those corporations will lobby congress to get the patent laws changed.

Cause it sure looks like neither the best interests of the country and its citizens, nor general sanity are enough to get them to do anything. Here's hoping there's enough pressure from this to get some corruption going in our favor.

And, yes, I know that's naive.

Re:Good!

[kebes]

Maybe if enough scumbag IP holding companies extort enough money out of big corporations, those corporations will lobby congress to get the patent laws changed. Only if those big corporations are losing more money to patent trolls than they are gaining through their own patent litigation (or via the market exclusion that their patents afford them). The problem is that the big companies generally benefit from the current patent system overall, even if sometimes they have to pay some small troll.

Consider the Vonage situation. This company is being sued by all the large incumbents. The established companies have a stake in keeping patents strong, since they are able to use this legal system to shut down competition. Having to occasionally pay some other company for a patent they neglected to get first is just "the cost of doing business."

I, too, wish that companies would lobby for a sane patent system. But, the problem is that even if big companies lose some money to frivolous patents, they are still sufficiently in control of the system that they win even more money from their own frivolous patents. Waiting for big business to save us from this mess is a mistake.

Re:interesting here that --

[wizzard2k]

They sued Cisco 3 years ago.

Actually

[Anonymous Coward]

Wi-LAN was an early innovator in the field of wireless stuff. They weren't formed as a patent holding company. Unfortunately, they couldn't compete in the post 802.11 market, and slowly withered away. They were part of the team that developed the WiMAX standard, and did a lot of pioneering work with OFDM. A year or so ago, they finally gave up and sold the various pieces of the company off to various other companies... *cough* fujitsu *cough*. Blame them.

Missing the point of patents

[mcrbids]

The basic idea behind a patent is to allow the patent holder "shelter time" to develop, market, sell, and profit from their new inventions.

How can a company claim damages if they haven't done the above? Patents are what they are, but it strikes me as just silly - you might be in violation of the patent, but how can you, as the patent holder, claim damages without any proof that loss has occurred?

Re:Who's missing?

[644bd346996]

I see that another poster has pointed out that they sued Cisco 3 years ago. So, why don't Reuters and the other wire services ever dig up those details on their own? Shouldn't they try to answer some of the obvious questions, rather than just post a notice that the lawsuit exists?

I wish we had journalists instead of just reporters.

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?

easy first step to reform, ban "Forum Shopping"

[plasmacutter]

Specifically, require all patent related cases to route through a centralized system in washington D.C.

Multiple courthouses/justices are fine, even keep the status quo with their method of appointment, but the cases (primary and appeals) filed should be randomly assigned to a given judge's court.

Removing the ability of troll companies to shop for particularly corrupt or incompetent forums should help reign in part of the problem and bring some regularity or balance to the overall system.

Re:interesting here that --

[wizzard2k]

They settled.

As part of the agreement, Cisco also received a license to Wi-LAN's patent portfolio. Other terms and conditions of the agreement are confidential.

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?

List of Patents

[Anti_Climax]

For those that are curious, a list of the patents Wi-LAN holds is here:

http://www.wi-lan.com/patents/patents-issued.aspx

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.