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April 08, 2010

Round up The Usual Suspects for Wi-Lan Bluetooth Lawsuit

By David Sims, TMCnet Contributing Editor

Another day, another lawsuit over technological intellectual property.

Today’s entrant: Wi-Lan, a Canadian technology licensing company, thinks 19 computer and phone companies are infringing its patent by “selling laptops and cellular handsets enabled with Bluetooth technology.”

Reuters (News - Alert) is reporting that among the usual defendants are some of the world's best-known technology providers. You can probably rattle them off now – yes, Apple, Dell, Acer, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Sony, Lenovo, Toshiba (News - Alert), cha cha cha.




Business Week reports that McKool Smith PC is representing Wi-Lan, with the litigious company saying today in a statement the law firm has successfully defended the patent rights of many high-profile companies in the United States.

Bluetooth is the wireless technology that uses short radio waves to send digital voices and data over short distances, from such devices as laptop computers, cellular phones and cameras, as Reuters explained. This is why you can do such things as hands-free phone calling and photo downloading.

The complaint was filed on Wednesday in a Marshall, Texas, federal court. Canada-based Wi-Lan is contending that aforesaid Naughty Nineteen are “deliberately” infringing its 1996 patent, Reuters says, a "method for frequency sharing and frequency punchout in frequency hopping communications network," by selling Bluetooth-enabled products.

Wi-Lan certainly knows its way around the courtroom, it’s filed charges before against many of the same defendants in the same court. This time it wants unspecified compensatory damages, “plus triple damages for willful infringement,” Reuters says.

The official Wi-Lan statement read “In its filing, WiLAN claims that these companies have infringed and continue to infringe WiLAN's U.S. Patent No. 5,515,369 by making and/or selling various products enabled with Bluetooth technology including cellular handsets and personal notebook computers.”

None of the defendants had any comment on the matter.


David Sims is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of David’s articles, please visit his columnist page. He also blogs for TMCnet here.

Edited by Marisa Torrieri


 







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