AT&T targeted by US company

US telecommunications and technology company AT&T has become the latest organisation to be targeted in a patent lawsuit filed by a non-practising entity.

Dallas-based AT&T, the largest provider of fixed telephones in the US, has been targeted by VPN Multicast Technologies, a subsidiary of ITUS.

The lawsuit, announced yesterday (November 4), centres on US patent number 8,477,778, called "applying multicast protocols and VPN tunnelling techniques to achieve high quality of service for real time media transport across IP networks."

It was filed at the US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas and also targets technology company Dimension Data LLC.

Since January 2012, ITUS has initiated 47 lawsuits and has generated revenue from more than 30 licenses and settlements.

Robert Berman, ITUS's president and chief executive said: "These lawsuits mark the eighth patented technology for which we have initiated lawsuits, as we continue to implement our strategy of diversification across a broad range of technologies."

AT&T did not respond immediately to a request for comment.