Wifi Revolution

The wireless market is no doubt lucrative. But it’s also one of those markets where copyright infringements and alleged patent violations are the order of the day. According to an Infoworld report, we have yet another case of patent violation as two divisions of Motorola — Symbol Technologies (News - Alert) and Wireless Valley Communications — are seeking injunction and monetary damages from Aruba for alleged patent infringement. A suit has been filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware in this regard.

 

Symbol Technologies and Wireless Valley Communications are demanding a permanent injunction against Aruba as well as unspecified monetary damages. The monetary charges have been tripled because the companies claim that Aruba is intentionally violating the patents.

 

Aruba is the company that makes a variety of WLAN equipment and technology for enterprises and other customers. These equipments by the company put the large networks together and solve the communication problems of the large organizations. Spokesman of the Sunnyvale, Calif., based company, Michael Tennefoss said that the company had not viewed the lawsuit yet and it was not ready to comment now.

 

Symbol Technologies and Wireless Valley Communications allege that Aruba intentionally uses their patented WLAN switch technologies and techniques for designing and managing WLANs. According to Aaron Bernstein, vice president and deputy general counsel at Symbol, all of Aruba’s WLAN switch, site planning, and radio-frequency management and monitoring products infringe the patents. This is not even a recent phenomenon, according to Aaron Bernstein; these patent violations are going on since the time Aruba sold its first product. The company has no plans to license its technology to Aruba; it simply wants Aruba to stop using the technology that violates Motorola’s (News - Alert) patents.

 

Symbol Technologies and Wireless Valley have filed this lawsuit because they own the patents. Both are wholly owned subsidiaries of Motorola.

In recent years, many wireless companies have engaged in a bitter battle with each other over patents. Qualcomm is in the middle of a court case with Nokia (News - Alert) and Broadcom. NTP has filed litigation against Research In Motion and other companies. An Australian research body won an injunction against Buffalo Technology (USA) for WLAN patent infringement.

 

Wireless is a growing field and companies have invested heavily to reap the future benefits. There are bound to be conflicts of interests among each other.

 

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Raju Shanbhag is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To see more of his articles, please visit his columnist page.

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