The companies include PC manufacturers such as Apple, Acer, Gateway, and HP, Wi-Fi gear manufacturers such as Atheros Communications, Belkin, Broadcom, Buffalo Technology, and D-Link, and retailers such as Best Buy and Circuit City.
While we prefer to resolve patent infringement through business discussions, we have consistently maintained that litigation was always a possibility when negotiations do not result in a license within a reasonable time, said Jim Skippen, chief executive at Wi-LAN.
In July 2007, Fujitsu signed a license agreement with Wi-LAN, for accessing Wi-LAN’s entire patent portfolio. Wi-LAN has been licensing its technology since 2006 and currently has 280 pending or issued patents.
Similar lawsuits have been filed by research and patent holding companies against technology manufacturing companies. In November 2006, Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) sued Buffalo’s 802.11a and 802.11g wireless devices for infringement against their patent, issued in September 1996 by the US Patent & Trademark office. These wireless standards appear in a variety of products such as Intel powered laptops, Dell and HP laptops, Netgear access points and network cards, and the Xbox. This standard also appears on Microsoft’s Zune, a portable music player device.
Research In Motion, a manufacturer of BlackBerry smartphone, paid $450m to settle its wireless e-mail push patent disputes last year with NTP Inc, a Virginia-based patent holding company.
Source: ComputerWire daily updates
