Qualcomm and MediaTek sued over wireless tech patents
Lawsuits target chips or chipsets used to communicate over wireless networks | Plaintiff can date company origins back to the 19th century, and claims to own hundreds of patents relevant to the telecommunications industry.
A trio of semiconductor companies are facing infringement lawsuits relating to wireless communications patents in two US federal courts.
Bell Northern Research (BNR) filed its suit on June 15 against chipmakers MediaTek and Qualcomm, together with alleged customers D-Link, Linksys, NETGEAR, TP-Link, and ZyXel, arguing that they had used patented technology without a licence or authorisation.
The complaint lodged at the US District Court for the Central District of California concerns US patents RE 48,629, 8,416,862, and 7,564,91.
Chips and ‘downstream products’
BNR is targeting the semiconductor firms over chips and/or chipsets that are used to communicate over wireless networks, while the remaining defendants are accused of using unlicensed “downstream” products that incorporate these disputed chips.
The move comes after Bell sued NXP Semiconductors at the US District Court for the Western District of Texas at the start of this month, alleging infringement of the same patents.
Technological advances
Bell Labs emerged in the 19th century to become “one of the first and greatest technology incubators in the US”, said the complaints. The “pioneering” company, added the suits, ultimately paved the way for many technological advances including the transistor, several kinds of lasers, the UNIX operating system, and computer languages.
When the Bell system broke up in 1982, it spawned several new companies including Northern Electric, which later led to the creation of the research lab, BNR.
Telecoms patent portfolio
According to the complaint, BNR’s patent portfolio comprises hundreds of patents that reflect important developments in telecommunications that were invented and refined by technology research companies including Agere, LSI, and Broadcom.
The ’914 patent—Method and System for Frame Formats for MIMO Channel Measurement Exchange—was issued in 2009 and “covers a method for communicating information by transmitting data via radio frequency channels”.
Meanwhile, the ’862 patent—Efficient Feedback of Channel Information in a Closed Loop Beamforming Wireless Communications System—issued in 2013, covers “the development of a method and system for the efficient feedback of channel information in a closed loop beamforming wireless communication system”.
And the ’629 patent, issued only two years ago—Backward-compatible Long Training Sequences for Wireless Communication Networks—addresses “a need to create a long training sequence of minimum peak-to-average ratio that uses more sub-carriers without interfering with adjacent channels”.
BNR is seeking a jury trial in both jurisdictions, along with damages.
