Patent holding company WiLAN announced more lawsuits against a slew of high-profile technology companies charging that their products infringe on one patent that relates to CDMA and HSPA technology and another relating to Wi-Fi and LTE.
The Canadian company is suing Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL), Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE:ALU), Dell, Hewlett-Packard, HTC America, Kyocera, Novatel Wireless and Sierra Wireless in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas. WiLAN cited U.S. patent RE37,802 and 5,282,222. The latter patent was granted in 1994, years before LTE and Wi-Fi technologies were developed.
WiLAN's patent portfolio consists of more than 1,400 issued and pending patents. In June it acquired wireless patents from Glenayre Electronics for $8 million in cash. WiLAN purchased a portfolio consisting of 60 issued U.S. patents and their foreign counterparts that address mobile messaging, wireless data transmission and reception.
WiLAN is certainly no stranger to patent lawsuits. In April 2010 is sued Apple and 18 other companies over Bluetooth technology. In 2007, the company initiated two patent infringement lawsuits against 22 different companies over Wi-Fi and DSL.
WiLAN has been called a patent troll, a characterization that its Chairman and CEO Jim Skippen as much as indicated when discussing the company's recent financial results. The company had seen revenues jump after concluding four major lawsuits.
"I stated many times before, my belief that our past investment in litigation could generate a significant return in the future," Skippen said.
For more:
- see this release
- see this Digital Trends article
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