Last Thursday, Freedom Wireless filed separate lawsuits against Alltel and Cingular Wireless over three alleged patent violations for "a novel cellular system that enables prepaid service subscribers to both place and receive cellular calls without dialing access codes or using modified phones." Freedom named Ericsson as a co-defendant with Cingular since it powers Cingular's prepaid service. Ditto for VeriSign and Comverse since they power Alltel's.
Freedom won a similar case against Boston Communications Group last year, which also saw Cingular and Alltel as co-defendants. That case settled out of court for some $87 million in July. Cingular and its prepay partner, Ericsson, filed a lawsuit against Freedom last August claiming the company's patents had no merit. Cingular asked the court to transfer Freedom's latest complaint to the court where litigation is already underway.
For more on the Freedom Wireless case:
- see this article from RCR News